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HOLY LIVING AND DYING; 

WITH 

PRAYERS: 


THE COMPLETE DUTY OF A CHRISTIAN 



RT. REV. JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D. 

LATE BISHOP OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORE. 


TO WHICH IS PREFIXED 

A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 


A NEW EDITION. 




S 




1892 

or WASH 




NEW-YORK: 

I). APPLETON & CO., 346 & 348 BROADWAY. 


M.DCCO.LYI. 



,T 3 


THE LIFE 


OF 

JEREMY TAYLOR, D. D. 


Jeremy Taylor, the third son of Nathaniel Taylor, a 
barber-surgeon at Cambridge, was born on the 15th of 
August, 1613. His family, had formerly held a respect¬ 
able rank in Gloucestershire; and he was lineally de¬ 
scended from Dr. Rowland Taylor, chaplain to Archbishop 
Cranmer, who suffered death at the stake, in the reign of 
Queen Mary. Jeremy Taylor was taught the rudiments 
of grammar and mathematics by his father, and in the 
Free-school at Cambridge he received further instruction. 
At the age of thirteen he was entered as a sizar of Caius 
College; and took his degree of master of arts, and was 
admitted into holy orders, in 1633. About this period he 
emoved to London, having been engaged by a former 
chamber-fellow, of the name of Risden, to supply his place 
as lecturer of St. Paul’s Cathedral for a short time. Here 
he preached, says Dr. Rust, “ to the admiration and 
astonishment of his auditory, and by his florid and youth¬ 
ful beauty, and sweet and pleasant air, and sublime and 
raised discourses, he made his hearers take him for some 
young angel newly descended from the visions of glory.” 
Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, having heard the fame of 
Taylor’s eloquence, was anxious to hear him, and sent for 
the young divine to preach before him at Lambeth. The 
archbishop was highly pleased with his discourse, but ob¬ 
served that he was too young for the office he was then 
filling in St. Paul’s. Taylor “ humbly begged his grace to 
pardon that fault, and promised if he lived he would mend 
it.” Being chancellor of the University of Oxford, Laud 
was desirous that Taylor should remove thither, either be¬ 
cause he would be better enabled to advance him there, 
or, as Dr. Rust says, “ to afford him better opportunities of 
study and improvement than a course of constant preach¬ 
ing would allow of.” He complied with the chancellor’s 
desire, and in 1635 was admitted master of arts in Uni- 

3 




IV 


THE LIFE OF 


versity College. The following letter was written by Laud 
to the warden and fellows of All-Souls College, three days 
after his admission. 

“To the Warden and Fellows of All-Souls College , Oxford . 

Salutem in Christo. 

“ These are on the behalf of an honest man and a scho¬ 
lar ; Mr. Osborn being to give over his fellowship, was 
with me at Lambeth, and, I thank him, freely offered me 
the nomination of a scholar to succeed in his place. Now 
having seriously deliberated with myself touching this bu¬ 
siness, and being willing to recommend such an one to you 
as you might thank me for, I am resolved to pitch upon 
Mr. Jeremiah Taylor, of whose abilities and sufficiencies 
every ways I have received very good assurance. And I 
do hereby heartily pray you to give him all furtherance, 
by yourself and the fellows, at the next election, not 
doubting but that he will approve himself a worthy and 
learned member of your society. And though he has had 
his breeding, for the most part, in the other university, yet 
I hope that shall be no prejudice to him, in regard that he 
is incorporated into Oxford, (ut sit eodem ordine , gradu^c.) 
and admitted into University College. Neither can I learn 
that there is any thing in your local statutes against it. I 
doubt not but you will use him with so fair respects as be¬ 
fits a man of his rank and learning; for which I shall not 
fail to give you thanks. So I leave him to your kindness, 
and rest “ Your loving friend, 

“ WILLIAM CANT.” 

The following account of the proceedings on this elec¬ 
tion, is extracted from Heber’s Life of Taylor, prefixed to 
the complete edition of his works. 

“ What authority,” says he, “ Mr. Osborn can have had 
to dispose in this manner of the nomination to a fellowship 
which he was himself about to resign, or how he could un¬ 
dertake to influence an election in which he was to have 
no voice, is not very easy to conjecture; unless we sup. 
pose him to have spoken the sentiments of some other of 
his brethren, who may have desired to pay their visitor the 
unusual compliment of asking his opinion in the choice of 
a new member ot the society. The recommendation, how¬ 
ever, forcible as it must have been, was not received with 


JEREMY TAYLOR. 


V 


implicit deference, inasmuch as a reasonable doubt existed 
whether Taylor was strictly eligible. Wood, indeed, is 
wrong in saying, he was above the age at which he might 
be chosen ; but the statutes are express in requiring can¬ 
didates to be of three years’ standing in the university, 
whereas ten days had, at the time of the election, barely 
elapsed, since Taylor had been incorporated into Oxford. 
It is true, that Laud seems to have supposed that his ad¬ 
mission ad eundem , as it entitled him to all the privileges of 
a master of arts, entitled him to whatever advantages were 
conferred by that standing in the university, which he must 
have had in order to take his degree there regularly; and 
a very great majority of the fellows, either convinced by 
this argument, or desirous of straining a point in favour of 
a candidate so deserving and so powerfully recommended, 
appear to have espoused his cause, and to have voted in 
the first instance for his admission. Sheldon, however, 
the warden, (afterward himself archbishop of Canterbury, 
and a munificent benefactor to the university,) less pliant 
or more scrupulous, refused to concur in the election. 
Under these circumstances, the fellows persisting in their 
choice, no election at all took place ; but the nomination 
devolved in due course to the archbishop, as visitor of 
the college, who thus acquired the right of appointing 
Taylor, by his sole authority, to the vacant situation, on 
(lie 14th of January, 1636.” 

According to Wood, his preaching at Oxford was 
greatly admired. He was, but at what particular time is not 
certain, made chaplain to the archbishop ; and in March, 
1637-8, was presented to the rectory of Uppingham, in 
Rutlandshire, by Juxton, bishop of London. Taylor was 
now, to all appearance, settled in a situation of comfortable 
independence; and soon afterward, in the 26th year of 
his age, he entered into a matrimonial alliance with Phcebe 
Langsdale. 

At the commencement of the struggle between Charles 
and his parliament, Taylor joined the king* at Oxford; 
where he published, in 1642, by his majesty’s command, a 
treatise, entitled “ Episcopacy asserted against the Ace- 
phali and Aerians, new and old which was dedicated to 

* Previously to the termination of Charles’s misfortunes, Taylor received 
from him, in token of his regard, his watch, and a few pearls and rubies, 
which had ornamented the ebony case in which he kept his Bible. 

A 2 


THE LIFE OF 


vi 

Christopher Hatton, his neighbour and patron; he was 
admitted the same year, with many other loyalists, to the 
degree of Doctor of Divinity, by virtue of the royal man¬ 
date. It was probably about this time, that his rectory of 
Uppingham was sequestered ; but the confusions which pre¬ 
vailed make it impossible to trace his history with certainty. 

From the Dedication to his “ Liberty of Prophesying,” 
it appears that he had sought a refuge from civil commo¬ 
tions in Wales. “ In the great storm,” says he, “ which 
dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces, I had been 
cast on the coast of Wales, and in a little boat thought to 
have enjoyed that rest and quietness, which in England, in 
a far greater, I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor, 
and thinking to ride safely, the storm followed me with so 
impetuous violence, that it broke a cable, and I lost my 
anchor. And here again I was exposed to the mercy of 
the sea, and the gentleness of an element that could nei¬ 
ther distinguish things nor persons : and but that He that 
stilleth the raging of the sea, and the noise of his waves, 
and the madness of his people, had provided a plank for 
me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of content or 
study ; but I know not whether I have been more pre¬ 
served by the courtesies of my friends, or the gentleness 
and mercies of a noble enemy.” According to Wood, he 
followed the royal army as chaplain; and, in 1644, was 
taken prisoner by the parliamentary forces which defeated 
Colonel Gerard before the Castle of Cardigan. How long 
he remained a prisoner does not appear, nor by what means 
he was released. 

This year, his edition of the Psalter, with collects to each 
psalm, appeared at Oxford, under the name of the right 
honourable Christopher Hatton ; but the eighth and an en¬ 
larged edition having been published in Taylor’s own name, 
in 1672, its authenticity is now generally acknowledged 
About the same time he published anonymously, “ A De¬ 
fence of the Liturgy,” which he afterward expanded into a 
larger work. Taylor had now recourse to keeping a school, 
which he carried on in partnership with William Nicholson, 
afterward bishop of Gloucester, and William Wyat, subse¬ 
quently a prebendary of Lincoln, at Newton-hall, in the 
parish of Lanfihangel. The conductors of this establish¬ 
ment produced, in 1647, “ A new and easy Institution of 
Grammar;” and, in the same year, Taylor published his 


JEREMY TAYLOR. 


Vi! 


“ Liberty of Prophesying,” an admirable book, although 
composed under very disadvantageous circumstances. “I 
had,” says he, in his dedication to Lord Hatton, “ no books 
of my own here, nor any in the voisinage, and but that I 
remembered the result of some of those excellent discourses 
which I had heard your lordship make, when I was so 
happy as in private to gather up what your temperance and 
modesty forbids to be public, I had come in prcelia inermis , 
and like enough might have fared accordingly.” 

Taylor’s first wife being dead, he had married for his 
second wife Mrs. Joanna Bridges, who was possessed of an 
estate at Mandinam, in Carmarthenshire. By this lady, who 
is said to have been an illegitimate daughter of Charles I. 
he had several children. As he had engaged in the office 
of a teacher for a subsistence, it is probable he relinquished 
it about this period, when it was no longer necessary. 

In 1648, he published “The Life of Christ, or the great 
Exemplar,” which soon became more popular than any of 
his preceding compositions. This was succeeded by the 
well-known and useful work to which this Life is prefixed 
—his “ Holy Living and Holy Dying,” composed at the 
desire of Lady Carbery, the wife of Richard Vaughan, earl 
of Carbery, a great friend and patron of the author, who 
resided at Golden Grove, in the same parish in which 
Taylor lived. He also composed a short Catechism for 
Children, and twenty-seven Sermons for the summer half- 
year. In addition to a controversial tract, on the differ¬ 
ences between the Roman Catholic and English churches, 
he, in 1654, extended his Catechism for Children into the 
manual, which he called “ Golden Grove,” in honour of 
the mansion of Lord Carbery. Some expressions in the 
Preface to this little work, gave offence to the government, 
and, as we learn from a letter of John Evelyn (who after- 
jvard became a valuable friend of Taylor,) caused his com¬ 
mittal to prison. There is considerable obscurity about this 
event in Taylor’s Life. Mr. Heber conjectures, that he was 
a second time imprisoned for the same cause; a supposi¬ 
tion founded partly on a letter of Evelyn, and on the much 
stronger evidence of a letter of Taylor, published with his 
“Deus Justificatus” alluding to his then being a prisoner 
in Chepstow-castle. Of this second imprisonment no 
more is known than of the first, although it is apparent 
from his letter, that he was at his wife’s house at Mandinam 


THE LIFE OF 


viii 

in November, 1655. Taylor, however, was not idle; he 
completed his series of Sermons for the whole year, by the 
addition of twenty-five Discourses, and also produced his 
“Unum Necessarium, or the Doctrine and Practice of Re¬ 
pentance, describing the Necessity of a strict, a holy, and 
a Christian Life, and rescued from popular Errors.” In 
this discourse, Taylor’s explication of the doctrine of ori¬ 
ginal sin, gave offence to his brethren of the church of 
England, as well as to the Calvinists; and produced a con¬ 
troversy with a Calvinistic preacher of the name of Jeanes t 
An answer to this essay of Taylor was also published by 
John Gaule. 

Taylor, in a letter dated Feb. 22, 1656-7, and probably 
addressed to Evelyn, communicates the death of two of his 
sons, and his intention to be in London before Easter. 
Thither he accordingly went, and, according to Wood, offi¬ 
ciated in a private congregation of Episcopalians. His 
poverty, to which he so frequently alludes before this time, 
was now alleviated by a yearly pension settled upon him 
by his kind friend Evelyn—a proof of his friendship and 
generosity, which Taylor acknowledges in a letter of “ most 
eloquent gratitude,” dated 15th May, 1657. 

“ To John Evelyn , Esquire . 

“ HONOURED AND DEAR SIR, 

“ A stranger came two nights since from you with a letter 
and a token, full of humanity and sweetness that was, and 
this of charity. I know it is more blessed to give than to 
receive, so neither can I envy that felicity of yours, not 
only that you can, but that you do give; and as I rejoice 
in that mercy which daily makes decrees in heaven for my 
support and comfort, so I do most thankfully adore the 
goodness of God to you, whom he consigns to greater glo¬ 
ries by the ministeries of these graces. But, Sir, what am 
I, or what can I do, or what have I done, that you think 1 
have, or can oblige you ? Sir, you are too kind to me, and 
oblige me not only beyond my merit, but beyond my mo¬ 
desty. I only can love you, and honour you, and pray for 
you; and in all this I cannot say but that I am behindhand 
with you; for I have found so great effluxes of all your 
worthiness and charities, that I am a debtor for your prayers, 
for the comfort of your letters, for the charity of your hand, 


JEREMY TAYLOR. 


ix 

and the affections of your heart. Sir, though you are be¬ 
yond the reach of my returns, and my services are very 
short of touching you, yet if it were possible for me to re¬ 
ceive any commands, the obeying of which might signify 
my great regards of you, I could with some more confidence 
converse with a person so obliging; but I am obliged, and 
ashamed, and unable to say so much as I would do, to re¬ 
present myself to be, 

“ Honoured and dear Sir, 

“ Your most affectionate, and obliged Friend and Servant 

“ JER. TAYLOR.” 

At the commencement of the ensuing year Taylor was 
confined in the Tower, on account of the indiscretion of his 
publisher, who had prefixed to his “Collection of Offices,” 
a print of Christ in the attitude of prayer, a species of re¬ 
presentation at that time considered as tending to idolatry, 
and prohibited by statute, under the pain of fine and im¬ 
prisonment. We find him, however, at Says Court on the 
25th February following, so that his restraint was but of 
short duration. 

In June, 1658, Taylor left London, and removed to 
Ireland, an alternate lectureship having been procured 
him in the town of Lisburn, by Edward, Earl of Conway, 
who possessed large estates in the neighbourhood. He 
obtained letters of recommendation to several persons of 
rank and influence in that kingdom, and a passport and 
protection under the sign manual of Cromwell himself. 
Thus the scene of Taylor’s usefulness was again changed. 
He fixed his residence near Portmore, the mansion of his 
new patron, a delightful neighbourhood, to which he was 
extremely partial. But his situation was insufficient to 
raise him to independence, since Evelyn still continued to 
pay him his yearly pension. Notwithstanding his se¬ 
cluded abode, articles were exhibited against him, by a 
person named Tandy, to the Irish privy-council, as a dan¬ 
gerous and disaffected person. That he had baptized 
a child with the sign of the cross, was the most important 
part of the charge; but this occasioned the renewal of a 
report that he was inclined to Popery. A warrant was 
accordingly issued, and he was conveyed to Dublin in the 
midst of winter : a severe illness was the consequence. 
Whether any punishment was inflicted upon him does not 


X 


THE LIFE OF 


appear. After a residence of about two years in Ireland, 
our author made a journey to London, probably for the 
purpose of seeing his Ductor Dubitantium through the 
press. On this work lie had been long employed, its pro¬ 
gress he had regarded with much solicitude, and on its 
completion he had founded his brightest hopes of renown 
and usefulness. But his expectations were not realized at 
the time of publication, nor has it become popular since. 
Compilations of this kind, in the Roman Catholic church, 
no doubt suggested the usefulness of such a work; but 
times had altered too much to render it necessary to Pro¬ 
testants, and Roman Catholics would have no recourse to 
the work of a heretic. Besides, with all its learning and 
acuteness, it does not possess that fervid eloquence and 
beauty of composition, which form the charm of his more 
popular works. 

This year (1660) also produced “The Worthy Commu 
nicant,” accompanied by his Sermon on the death of Sir 
George Dalstone. Taylor’s journey to London was at a 
fortunate juncture ; his name appeared subscribed to the 
declaration of the loyalists, in London and its vicinity, 
on the 24th April, and his merit was not overlooked on 
the restoration; for he was appointed to the bishopric of 
Down and Connor, on the 6th of August; and shortly after¬ 
ward was elected chancellor of the university of Dublin. 
He preached in the January following, on the consecra¬ 
tion of the two archbishops and ten bishops,—before the 
two houses of parliament, on the 8th May,—and again 
before the primate at his metropolitan visitation of Down 
and Connor. In February, in that year, he was made 
a member of the Irish privy-council; and in addition to his 
former diocess, was intrusted with the administration of the 
small adjacent one of Dromore, in April. Taylor discharged 
the duties of his episcopal function with great zeal, min¬ 
gled with charity, frequently inviting the puritanical clergy 
to friendly conferences, and endeavouring to soften down 
their prejudices against the established church by kindness 
and attention. 

“ In answer to these advances,” says Heber, “ the pul¬ 
pits resounded with exhortations to stand by the covenant 
even unto blood : with bitter invectives against the episco¬ 
pal order, and against Taylor more particularly; while the 
preachers entered into a new engagement among them* 


EREMY TAYLOR. 


XI 


selves, to speak with no bishop, and to endure neither theii 
government nor their persons! The virtues and eloquence 
of Taylor, howeyer, were not without effect on the laity, 
who were at the same time offended by the refusal of their 
pastors to attend a public conference. The nobility and 
gentry of the three dioceses, with one single exception, 
came over by degrees to the bishop’s side: and we are 
even assured by Carte, that during the two years which in¬ 
tervened before the enforcement of the Act of Uniformity, 
the great majority of the ministers themselves had yielded, 
if not to his argument, to his persevering kindness and 
Christian example.” 

Besides the sermons above alluded to, he published, in 
1661, a small manual of rules for his clergy—in 1662, his 
Via IntelligencicB —in 1663, “A Defence and Introduction 
to the rite of Confirmation,” and three sermons—and in the 
succeeding year, his “ Dissuasive from Popery,” which was 
undertaken by the desire of the collective body of Irish 
bishops, and was the last of his publications; but he had 
written a “ Discourse on Christian Consolation,” and “ Con¬ 
templations on the State of Man,” which were both pub¬ 
lished after his death. This event took place on the 13th 
August, 1667, after ten days’ sickness, in the fifty-fifth 
year of his age, and the seventh of his episcopacy; he was 
buried at Dromore where his friend Dr. Rust preached 
his funeral sermon. Taylor’s sons died during his life¬ 
time, but his widow and three daughters survived him: 
the eldest died unmarried; the second, Mary, married 
Dr. Francis Marsh, afterward archbishop of Dublin, whose 
descendants are numerous and wealthy; and the third, 
Joanna, married Edward Harrison, of Maralave, Esq. several 
of whose descendants are still living. 

Jeremy Taylor, presents as fine a pattern of a Christian 
bishop as the annals of the church of England afford. 
His fine, though ardent temper, his bland and gentle man¬ 
ners, his deep humility, and unbounded charity, were 
united with extensive learning, an acute and vigorous mind, 
and a free and excursive spirit of inquiry in the pursuit of 
truth. “ Nature,” says his friend Dr. Rust, “ had be¬ 
friended him much in his constitution; for he was a per¬ 
son of a most sweet and obliging humour, of great candour 
and ingenuity; and there was so much of salt and fineness 
of wit, and prettiness of address in his familiar discourses. 


xl j THE LIFE OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 

as made his conversation have all the pleasantness of a 
comedy, and all the usefulness of a sermon; his soul was 
made up of harmony, and he never spake but he charmed his 
hearers, not only with the clearness of his reason, but all 
his words, and his very tones and cadences, were strangely 
musical.” He was equally amiable in domestic life, as ap¬ 
pears from the manner in which he speaks of the death of 
his sons, and his frequent allusions to domestic happiness. 
His kind heart is eloquently exhibited in the following 
passage, extracted from his sermon called “ The Marriage 
Ring.” “ Nothing,” he says, “ can sweeten felicity itself 
but love; but when a man dwells in love then the breasts 
of his wife are pleasant as the droppings on the hill of 
Hermon, her eyes are fair as the light of heaven ; she is 
a fountain sealed, and he can quench his thirst, and ease 
his cares, and lay his sorrows down upon her lap, and can 
retire home to his sanctuary and refectory, and his gardens 
of sweetness and chaste refreshments. No man can tell, 
but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents 
make a man’s heart dance in the pretty conversation of 
those dear pledges—their childishness, their stammering, 
their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, 
their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and 
comfort, to him that delights in their person and society.” 

Few have been so anxious to extend their sphere of use¬ 
fulness, and few have obtained so much success in their 
endeavours as Taylor. Though belonging to an ecclesias¬ 
tical establishment, and naturally desirous not to diffei 
from its canons; yet where truth required it, he shook off 
the trammels of authority, and boldly stated his views and 
opinions to the world. To his heterodoxy on the subject 
of original sin, we have before adverted. Our warmest 
gratitude is due to him for the principles of toleration 
which he advocated in his “ Liberty of Prophesying,” and 
which established the right of every sect to freedom of 
conscience; he, indeed, claims toleration for those only 
who acknowledge the Apostles’ creed, which he lays down 
as the rule of faith; but his arguments are of general ap¬ 
plication : and the whole spirit of the work is in favour of 
universal toleration. 


CONTENTS 


THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY LIVING. 


Dedication 


page, xx 


CHAP. I.— Consideration of the General Instruments and Means serving 
to a Holy Life , by way of Introduction- 

Sect. I.—The first General Instrument of Holy Living, Care of 

our Time - . 7 

Rules for employing our Time ------ 9 

The benefits of this Exercise - , - 15 

Sect. II.—The second General Instrument of Holy Living, Purity 

of Intention - - - - - - - -16 

Rules for our Intentions - - - - - - -17 

Signs of Purity of Intention ------- 19 

Sect. III.—The third General Instrument of Holy Living; or the 

Practice of the Presence of God - - - - - 23 

Several manners of the Divine Presence - - - - 24 

Rules of exercising this Consideration.27 

The benefits of this Exercise ------ 29 

Prayers and Devotions according to the Religion and Purposes of 

the foregoing Considerations ------ 31 

For Grace to spend our Time well - - - - - - ib. 

The first Prayers in the Morning, as soon as we are dressed - ib 
An Act of Adoration, being the Song that the Angels sing in Heaven 32 
An Act of Thanksgiving, being the Song of David for the Morning ib. 
An Act of Oblation, or presenting ourselves to God for the Day - 33 

An Act of Repentance or Contrition - - - - ib 

Prayer or Petition - -----ib. 

An Act of Intercession or Prayer for others, to be added to this, or 
any other Office, as our Devotion, or Duty, or their Needs 
shall determine us - -- -- -- - 34 

For the Church - -- -- -- -- ib. 

For the King - -- -- -- -- -ib 

For the Clergy - -- -- -- -- ib. 

For Wife or Husband --------35 

For our Children - -- -- -- -- ib. 

For Friends and Benefactors ------- ib. 

For our Family - -- -- -- -- ib. 

For all in misery - -- -- -- -- ib, 

Another Form of Prayer, for the Morning - - - - 36 

An Ejaculation.38 

An Exercise to be used at any Time of the Day - - - ib. 

Hymn, collected out of the Psalms, recounting the Excellences 

and Greatness of God.ib. 

Another Hymn -...-.-.-39 
Ejaculations - -- -- -- -ib. 

Prayer 40 

B 













CONTENTS. 


XlV 


A Form of Prayer for the Evening, to be said by such who have 
no Time or Opportunity to say the public Prayers ap¬ 
pointed for this Office ... - 

Another Form of Evening Prayer, which may also be used at 

Bed-time .. 

Ejaculations and short Meditations to be used in the Night, when 
we wake, --------- 

Ad Sect. II.] A Prayer for Holy Intention in the Beginning and 
Pursuit of any considerable Action, as Study,Preaching,&c. 
Ad Sect. III.] A Prayer meditating and referring to the Divine 
Presence ------ 

CHAP. II .—Of Christian Sobriety. 

Sect. I.—Of Sobriety in the general Sense 
Evil Consequences of Voluptuousness or Sensuality 
Degrees of Sobriety - 
Rules for Suppressing Voluptuousness 
Sect. II.—Of Temperance in Eating and Drinking 
Measures of Temperance in Eating 
Signs and Effects of Temperance - - - 

Of Drunkenness ------ 

Evil Consequents of Drunkenness - 
Signs of Drunkenness ..... 

Rules for obtaining Temperance ... 

Sect. III.—Of Chastity ..... 

The Evil Consequents of Uncleanness 
Acts of Chastity in general .... 

Acts of Virginal Chastity .... 

Rules for Widows, or vidual Chastity 
Rules for married Persons, or Matrimonial Chastity 
Remedies against Uncleanness ... 

Sect. IV.—Of Humility .... 

Arguments against Pride, by way of Consideration 
Acts or Offices of Humility .... 

Means and Exercises for obtaining and increasing the Gra< 
Humility ...... 

Signs of Humility - 
Sect. V.—Of Modesty - 

Acts and Duties of Modesty, as it is opposed to Curiosity 
Acts of Modesty, as it is opposed to Boldness - 
Acts of Modesty, as it is opposed to Indecency 
Sect. VI.—Of Contentedness in all Estates and Accidents 
Instruments or Exercises to procure Contentedness 
Means to obtain Content, by way of Considerations 
Poverty, or a low Fortune .... 

The Charge of many Children - 
Violent Necessities ..... 

Death of Children, or nearest relatives and Friends 
Untimely Death ...... 

Death unseasonable ..... 

Sudden Death, or violent ..... 

Being Childless. 

Evil or Unfortunate Children .... 


- 41 
42 
44 
46 
ib. 


47 
ib. 

48 

49 

51 

52 

53 

54 

55 
57 
ib. 
59 
62 

65 

66 

67 

68 
70 

73 

74 
76 


ce of 


80 

85 

86 
ib. 

89 

90 
92 
96 

106 

111 

116 

117 

118 

119 

120 
121 
122 

ib. 













CONTENTS. 


XV 


Our own Death.122 

Prayers for the several Graces and Parts of Christian Sobriety 123 
A Prayer against Sensuality ------- ib. 

For Temperance - -.--....ib. 

For Chastity : to be said especially by unmarried Persons - 124 
A Prayer for the Love of God, to be said by Virgins and Widows, 
professed or resolved so to live; and may be used by any 

one.- - ib. 

A Prayer to be said by married Persons in behalf of themselves 

and each other. 125 

A Prayer for the Grace of Humility.ib. 

Acts of Humility and Modesty, by way of Prayer and Meditation 126 
A Prayer for a contented Spirit, and the Grace of Moderation and 

Patience ..127 


CHAP. III.— Of Christian Justice. 

Sect. I. — Of Obedience to our Superiors - - - - 

4cts and Duties of Obedience to all our Superiors - 
Remedies against Disobedience, and Means to endear our Obe¬ 
dience, by way of Consideration. 

Degrees of Obedience - 

Sect. II. — Of Provision, or that Part of Justice which is due from 
Superiors to Inferiors ------- 

Duties of Kings, and all the Supreme Power as Lawgivers 
The duty of Superiors, as they are Judges - 
The Duty of Parents to their Children - - - - - 

Rules for married Persons ------- 

The Duty of Masters of Families ------ 

The Duty of Guardians or Tutors ------ 

Sect. III. — Of Negotiation, or Civil Contracts - 

Rules and Measures of Justice in Bargaining - - - - 

Sect. IV. — Of Restitution - 

Rules of making Restitution - 

Prayers to be said in relation to the several Obligations and Of¬ 
fices of Justice - * ' - 

A Prayer for the Grace of Obedience, to be said by all Persons 
under Command - - - - - - - 

Prayers for Kings and all Magistrates, for our Parents, spiritual 
and natural, are in the following Litanies, at the end of the 
Fourth Chapter - - - - - 

A Prayer to be said by Subjects, when their land is invaded and 
over-run by barbarous or wicked People, Enemies of the 

Religion or the Government. 

A Prayer to be said by Kings or Magistrates, for themselves and 
their people - - - - 

A Prayer to be said by Parents for their Children - 
A Prayer to be said by Masters of Families, Curates, Tutors, or 
other obliged Persons, for their Charges 
A Prayer to be said by Merchants, Tradesmen, and Handicrafts¬ 
men . 

A Prayer to be said by Debtors, and all Persons obliged, whether 

by Crime or Contract ------ 

A Prayer for Patron and Benefactors 


128 

129 

132 

135 

136 
ib. 

139 

140 

141 

142 

143 
ib. 
ib. 

147 

148 

153 


ib. 


ib. 


154 

155 

156 

157 


ib 

158 

ib 







XVI 


CONTENTS. 


par- 


CHAP. IV .—Of Christian Religion 
Of the Internal Actions of Religion 
Sect. I.—Of Faith ..... 

The Acts and Offices of Faith 
Signs of True Faith - 
The Means and Instruments to obtain Faith 
Sect. II.—Of the Hope of a Christian 
The Acts of Hope ..... 

Rules to govern our Hope - 
Means of Hope, and Remedies against Despair 
Sect. III.—Of Charity, or the Love of God, 

The Acts of Love to God - 
The Measures and Rules of Divine Love - 
Helps to increase our Love to God, by way of Exercise 
The two States of Love to God 
Cautions and Rules concerning Zeal 
Of the External Actions of Religion 
Sect. IV.—Of Reading or Hearing the Word of God 
Rules for Hearing or Reading the Word of God 
Advice concerning Spiritual Books and Ordinary Sermons 
Sect. V.—Of Fasting ... ... 

Rules for Christian Fasting - 
The Benefits of Fasting - 

Sect. VI.—Of keeping Festivals, and Days holy to the Lor< 
ticularly the Lord’s Day - 
Receiving the blessed Sacrament ... 

Sect. VII.—Of Prayer - 

Motives to Prayer - 
Rules for the Practice of Prayer - 
Cautions for making vows .... 

Remedies against wandering Thoughts in Prayer 
Signs of Tediousness of Spirit in our Prayers and all Acti 
Religion ....... 

Remedies against Tediousness of Spirit ... 

Sect. VIII.—Of Alms - 

Works of Mercy, or the several kinds of Corporeal Alms 
Works of Spiritual Alms and Mercy ... 

Rules for giving Alms - 

Motives to Charity . 

Remedies against Unmercifulness and Uncharitableness 

1. Against Envy, by way of Consideration 

2. Remedies against Anger, by way of Exercise 
Remedies against Anger, by way of Consideration 

3. Remedies against Covetousness, the third Enemy of Mercy 

Sect. IX.—Of Repentance ... 

Acts and Parts of Repentance - - - 

Motives to Repentance - 
Sect. X.—Of Preparation to, and the Manner how to receive the 

Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper 
The Effects and Benefits of worthy Communicating - 
Prayers for all Sorts of Men and all Necessities; relating 
several Parts of the Virtue of Religion - 
A Prayer for the Graces oDFaith, Hope, Charity 


ns of 


to the 


159 

160 
ib. 

161 

163 

165 
ib. 

166 
168 

172 

173 

175 

176 

178 

179 
181 
182 

183 

184 

185 

186 
190 

ib. 

192 

196 
ib. 

197 

203 

204 

205 

206 
210 
211 

ib. 

212 

218 

220 

ib. 

221 

224 

226 

231 

233 

239 

241 

248 

249 

250 












CONTENTS. 


xvii 


Acts of Love, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation; to be used in 

Private.250 

A Prayer to be said in any affliction, as Death of Children, of 
Husband or Wife, in great Poverty, in Imprisonment, in 
a sad and disconsolate Spirit, and in temptation to Despair 251 
Ejaculations and short Meditations to be used in Time of Sick¬ 
ness and Sorrow, or Danger of Death .... 252 
An Act of Faith concerning the Resurrection and the Day of 

Judgment, to be said by Sick Persons, or meditated - 253 
Short Prayers to be said by Sick Persons - - - - - ib. 

Acts of Hope, to be used by Sick Persons after a Pious Life - 256 
A Prayer to be said in behalf of a Sick or Dying Person - - ib. 

A Prayer to be said in a Storm at Sea.257 

An Act of Resignation - 258 

4 Form of a Vow in the Time of Danger - - - . ib. 

4 Form of a Prayer to be used for a Blessing on an Enterprise ib. 
4 Prayer before a Journey ib 

4d Sect. IV.] A Prayer to be said before the Hearing or Reading 

the Word of God.259 

4d Sect. V. IX. X.] A Form of Confession of Sins and Repent¬ 
ance, to be used upon Fasting Days, or Days of Humilia¬ 
tion ; especially in Lent, and before the Holy Sacrament ib. 

Prayer.262 

fl.] Ex Liturgia S. Basilii magna ex parte - 263 

A short Form of Thanksgiving to be said upon any special Deli¬ 
verance, as from Childbirth, from Sickness, from Battle, 
or imminent Danger at Sea or Land, &c. - - - 267 

A Prayer of Thanksgiving after the receiving of some great 
Blessing, as the Birth of an Heir, the Success of an honest 
Design, a Victory, 3. good Harvest, &c. - - - 269 

A Prayer to be said on the Feast of Christmas, or the Birth of our 
Blessed Saviour Jesus: the same also may be said on the 
Feast of the Annunciation and Purification of the Blessed 

Virgin Mary . ..- 270 

A Prayer to be said upon our Birth-day, or Day of Baptism - 271 
A Prayer to be said upon the Days of the Memory of Apostles, 

Martyrs, &c. - -.272 

A Form of Prayer recording all the Parts and Mysteries of 
Christ’s Passion, being a short History of it: to be used 
especially in the Week of the Passion, and before the re¬ 
ceiving of the Blessed Sacrament - - - - - ib. 

Prayer ----------- 276 

Ad Sect. VII. VIII. X.] A Form of Prayer or Intercession for 
all Estates of People in the Christian Church. The Parts 
of which may be added to any other Forms : and the whole 
Office, entirely as it lies, is proper to be said in our Prepa¬ 
ration to the Holy Sacrament, or on the Day of Celebration ib. 


1. For Ourselves - .277 

2. For the whole Catholic Church ------ ib. 


3. For all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors - - - ib- 

4. For all the Orders of them that minister about holy Things 278 

5. For our nearest Relatives, as Husband, Wife, Children, Fa¬ 

mily, &c. ib 

B 2 








XV111 


CONTENTS. 


6 . For our Parents, our Kindred in the Flesh, our Friends and 

Benefactors ------- 279 

7. For all that lie under the Rod of War, Famine, Pestilence : to 

be said in the time of Plague, or War, &c. - 279 

8 . For all Women with Child, and for Unborn Children - - 280 

9. For all Estates of Men and Women in the Christian Church - ib. 
Ad Sect. X.] The Manner of using these Devotions, by way of 

Preparation to the receiving the blessed Sacrament of the 
Lord’s Supper -------- 282 

A Prayer of Preparation or Address to the holy Sacrament - ib. 

An Act of Love. r - -ib. 

An Act of Desire - 183 

An Act of Contrition - - ----- ib. 

An Act of Faith - .ib. 

Petition .... ----- 284 

Ejaculations to be said before, or at, the receiving of the holy Sa¬ 
crament -------- - ib. 

Ejaculations to be used any time that Day, after the Solemnity is 

ended - - 287 


THE RULES AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING. 

CHAP. I.— A general Preparation towards a holy and blessed 
Death, by way of Consideration. 

Sect. I.—Consideration of the Vanity and Shortness of Man’s 


Life.13 

Sect. II. — The Consideration reduced to Practice - - - 14 

Sect. III. — Rules and Spiritual Arts oflengthening our Days, and 

to take off the Objection of a Short Life - - - 25 

Sect. IV. — Consideration of the Miseries of Man’s Life - - 34 

Sect. V.—The Consideration reduced to Practice - - - 39 


CHAP. II.— A general Preparation towards a holy and blessed 
Death , by way of Exercise. 

Sect. I.—Three Precepts preparatory to a holy Death, to be prac¬ 
tised in our whole Life.42 

Sect. II.—Of Daily Examination of our Actions in the whole 

Course of our Health, preparatory to our Death-bed - 47 

Reasons for a Daily Examination ------ ib. 

The Benefits of this Exercise ...... 49 

Sect. III.—Of Exercising Charity during our whole Life - 54 
Sect. IV. — General Considerations to enforce the former Practices 57 
The Circumstances of a Dying Man’s Sorrow and Danger - 58 

CHAP. III.— Of the State of Sickness, and the Temptations inci¬ 
dent to it, with their proper Remedies 
Sect. I.—Of the State of Sickness ------ 61 

Sect. II. — Of the first Temptation proper to the State of Sickness, 

Impatience - -- .- ...64 

Sect. III.—Constituent or integral Parts of Patience - - - 66 

Sect. IV.—Remedies against Impatience, by way of Consideration 67 







CONTENTS. 


XIX 
P AGE# 

Sect. V.—Remedies against Impatience, by way c<f Exercise - 74 

Sect. VI.—Advantages of Sickness ,.79 

Sect. VII.—The second Temptation proper to the State of Sick¬ 
ness, Fear of Death, with its remedies - - - - 92 

Remedies against the Fear of Death, by way of Consideration - 93 

Sect. VIII. — Remedies against the Fear of Death, by way of 

Exercise.97 

Sect. IX.—General Rules and Exercises whereby our Sickness 

may become safe and sanctified ..... 103 


CHAP. IV.— Of the Practice of the Graces proper to the State 
Sickness , which a Sick Man may practice alone. 

Sect. I.—Of the Practice of Patience. 

The Practice and Acts of Patience, by way of Rule - 
Sect. II.—Acts of Patience, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation - 
The Prayer to be said in the Beginning of a Sickness 
An Act of Resignation, to be said by a Sick Person in all the evil 
Accidents of his Sickness ...... 

A Prayer for the Grace of Patience. 

A Prayer to be said when the Sick Man takes Physic 

Sect. III.—Of the Practice of the Grace of Faith, in the Time of 

Sickness. 

Sect. IV.—Acts of Faith, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation, to 
be said by Sick Men in the Days of their Temptation 
The Prayer for the Grace and Strengths of Faith - 
Sect. V.—Of the Practice of the Grace of Repentance in the Time 
of Sickness --------- 

Sect. VI.—Rules for the Practice of Repentance in Sickness 
Means of exciting Contrition, or Repentance of Sins, proceeding 

from the Love of God. 

Sect. VII.—Acts of Repentance, by way of Prayer and Ejacula¬ 
tion, to be used especially by Old Men in their Age, and by 
all Men in their sickness ------ 

A Prayer for the Grace and Perfection of Repentance 
A Prayer for Pardon of Sins, to be said frequently in Time of 
Sickness, and in all the Portions of Old Age - 
An Act of holy Resolution of Amendment of Life, in case of Re¬ 
covery . 

Sect. VIII.—An Analysis, or Resolution of the Decalogue, and 
the special Precepts of the Gospel, describing the Duties 
enjoined and the Sins forbidden respectively ; for the As¬ 
sistance of Sick Men in making their Confessions to God 
and his Ministers, and the rendering their Repentance 
more particular and perfect - 

I. Comm. Thou shalt have none other Gods but me - 

II. Comm. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven Image, nor 

worship it. 

III. Comm. Thou shalt not take God’s Name in vain 

IV. Comm. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day 

V. Comm. Honour thy Father am thy Mother - 

VI. Comm. Thou shalt do no Murder. 

VII. Comm. Thou shalt not commit Adultery - - - - 

VIII. Comm. Thou shalt not Steal. 


of 

111 

112 
118 

122 

123 

124 

125 


ib 

129 

131 

132 
136 

139 


144 

145 

147 

148 


149 

ib. 

151 
ib. 

152 

153 

154 
ib. 

155 





XX 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE. 

IX. Comm. Thou shalt not bear False Witness - - - ib. 

X. Comm. Thou shalt not Covet 156 

The special Precepts of the Gospel ..... 157 

Sect. IX.—Of the Sick Man’s Practice of Charity and Justice, by 

way of Rule.- 159 

Sect. X.—Acts of Charity, by way of Prayer and Ejaculation; 
which may also be used for Thanksgiving, in case of Re¬ 
covery .163 

Prayer ----------- 165 

CHAP. V.— Of Visitation of the Sick: or the Assistance that is to he 
done to Dying Persons by the Ministry of their Clergy-guides. 

Sect. I.—General Observations.166 

Sect. II.—Rules for the Manner of Visitation of Sick Persons - 168 
Sect. III.—Of Ministering in the Sick Man’s Confession of Sins 

and Repentance -.171 

Arguments and Exhortations to move the Sick Man to Confession 

of Sins - 172 

Instruments by way of Consideration, to awaken a careless Per¬ 
son, and a stupid Conscience - - - - - 175 

Sect. IV.—Of the ministering to the Restitution and Pardon, or 
Reconciliation of the Sick Person, by administering the 
Holy Sacrament - - - - - - - -183 

Sect. V.—Of ministering to the Sick Person by the Spiritual Man, 

as he is the Physician of Souls ..... 193 

Considerations against unreasonable Fears of not having our Sins 

pardoned --------- ib. 

An Exercise against Despair in the Day of our Death - . 200 

Sect. VI.—Considerations against Presumption ... 205 
Sect. VII.—Offices to be said by the Minister, in his Visitation of 

the Sick --------- 208 

A Prayer to be said by the Priest secretly - - - - ib. 

A Psalm .......... 209 

Another Prayer --------- ib. 

A Prayer to be said by the Standers-by ----- 212 

Another Prayer - -- -- -- -- 214 

Ejaculations.. 215 

The Blessing.. 216 

The Doxology --------- ib. 

A Prayer to be said in the Case of a sudden Surprise by Death, as 
by a mortal Wound, or evil accidents in Childbirth, when 
the Forms and Solemnities of Preparation cannot be used 217 
Sect. VIII.—A Peroration concerning the Contingencies and 
Treatings of our departed Friends after Death, in order to 
their Burial, &c. ------ - 218 













TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND TRULY NOBLE 


RICHARD LORD VAUGHAN, 

EARL OF CARBERY, KNIGHT OF THE HONOURABLE ORDER OF THE BATH. 


My Lord, — I have lived to see religion painted upon banners, and thrust out 
of churches, and the temple turned into a tabernacle, and that tabernacle 
made ambulatory, and covered with skins of beasts and torn curtains, and God 
to be worshipped, not as he is “ the Father of our Lord Jesus” (an afflicted 
prince, the king of sufferings,) nor as the “ God of peace,” (which two appella¬ 
tives God newly took upon him in the New Testament, and glories in it for 
ever:) but he is owned now rather as “ the Lord of Hosts,” which title he was 

? leased to lay aside, when the kingdom of the gospel was preached by the 
’rince of peace. But when religion puts on armour, and God is not acknow¬ 
ledged by his New Testament titles, religion may have in it the power of 
the sword, but not the power of godliness; and we may complain of this to 
God, and amongst them that are afflicted, but we have no remedy, but what 
we must expect from the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, and the returns 
of the God of peace. In the mean time, and now that religion pretends to 
stranger actions upon new principles, and men are apt to prefer a pros¬ 
perous error before an afflicted truth, and some will think they are religious 
enough, if their worshippings have in them the prevailing ingredient; and 
the ministers of religion are so scattered, that they cannot unite to stop the 
inundation, and from chairs or pulpits, from their synods or tribunals, chastise 
the iniquity of the error, and the ambition of evil guides, and the infidelity 
of the willingly-seduced multitude, and that those few good people, who 
have no other plot in their religion but to serve God and save their souls, 
do want such assistance of ghostly counsel as may serve their emergent needs, 
and assist their endeavours in the acquist of virtues, and relieve their dangers, 
when they are tempted to sin and death; I thought I had reasons enough 
inviting me to draw into one body those advices, which the several neces¬ 
sities of many men must use at some time or other, and many of them daily ; 
that by a collection of holy precepts they might less feel the want of per¬ 
sonal and attending guides, and that the rules for conduct of souls might be 
committed to a book, which they might always have; since they could not 
always have a prophet at their needs, nor be suffered to go up to the house 
of the Lord to inquire of the appointed oracles. 

I know, my Lord, that there are some interested persons, who add scorn 
to the afflictions of the church of England, and because she is afflicted by 
men, call her “ forsaken of the Lord and because her solemn assemblies 
are scattered, think that the religion is lost, and the church divorced from 
God, supposing Christ (who was a man of sorrows) to be angry with his 
spouse when she is like him [for that is the true state of the error,] and that 
he, who promised his Spirit to assist his servants in their troubles, will, be¬ 
cause they are in trouble, take away the Comforter from thpm; who cannot 
be a comforter, but while he cures our sadnesses, and relieves our sorrows, 
and turns our persecutions into joys, and crowns, and sceptres. But concern¬ 
ing the present state of the church of England, I consider, that because we 
now want the blessings of external communion in many degrees, and 
the circumstances of a prosperous and unafflicted people, we are to take 
estimate of ourselves with single judgments, and every man is to give 
sentence concerning the state of his own soul by the precepts and rules of 

“ C 1 


11 


DEDICATION. 


our lawgiver, not by the after-decrees and usages of the church ; that is, by 
the essential parts of religion, rather than by the uncertain significations of 
any exterior adherences: for though it be uncertain, when a man is the 
member of a church, whether he be a member to Christ or no, because in 
the church’s net there are fishes good and bad; yet we may be sure, that, 
if we be members of Christ, we are of a church to all purposes of spiritual 
religion and salvation; and in order to this, give me leave to speak this 
great truth. 

That man does certainly belong to God, who, 1. Believes and is baptized 
into all the articles of the Christian faith, and studies to improve his know' 
ledge in the matters of God, so as may best make him to live a holy life 

2. He that, in obedience to Christ, worships God diligently, frequently, and 
constantly, with natural religion, that is, of prayer, praises, and thanksgiving. 

3. He that takes all opportunities to remember Christ’s death by a frequent 
sacrament (as it can be had:) or else by inward acts of understanding, will, 
and memory (which is the spiritual communion,) supplies the want of the 
external rite. 4. He that lives chastely; 5. And is merciful ; 6. And despises 
the world, using it as a man, but never suffering it to rifle a duty; 7. And 
is just in his dealing and diligent in his calling. 8. He that is humble in his 
spirit, 9. And obedient to government, \ J. And content in his fortune and 
employment. 11. He that does his duty because he loves God; 12. And 
especially, if, after all this, he be afflicted, and patient, or prepared to suffer 
affliction for the cause of God: the man that hath these twelve signs of grace 
and predestination, does as certainly belong to God, and is his son, as surely 
as he is his creature. 

And if my brethren in persecution, and in the bonds of the Lord Jesus, 
can truly show these marks, they shall not need be troubled, that others can 
show a prosperous outside, great revenues, public assemblies, uninterrupted 
successions of bishops, prevailing armies, or any arm of flesh, or less certain 
circumstance. These are marks of the Lord Jesus, and the characters of a 
Christian: this is a good religion; and these things God’s grace hath put into 
our powers, and God’s laws have made to be our duty, and the nature of 
men, and the needs of commonwealths, have made to be necessary. The 
other accidents and pomps of a church are things without our power, and 
are not in our choice; they are good to be used, when they may be had, 
and they help to illustrate or advantage it: but if any of them constitute a 
church in the being of a society and a government, yet they are not of its 
constitution, as it is Christian, and hopes to be saved. 

And now the case is so with us, that we are reduced to that religion, which 
no man can forbid; which we can keep in the midst of a persecution; by 
which the martyrs, in the days of our fathers, went to heaven; that, by 
which we can be servants of God, and receive the Spirit of Christ, and 
make use of his comforts, and live in his love, and in charity with all men : 
and they that do so, cannot perish. 

My Lord, I have now described some general lines and features of that 
religion, which I have more particularly set down in the following pages: 
in which I have neither served nor disserved the interest of any party of 
Christians, as they are divided by uncharitable names from the rest of their 
brethren: and no man will have reason to be angry with me for refusing to 
mingle in his unnecessary or vicious quarrels; especially while I study to 
do him good by conducting him in the narrow way to heaven, without 
intricating him in the labyrinths and wild turning of questions and uncertain 
lalkings. I have told what men ought to do, and by what means they may 
be assisted ; and in most cases, I have also told them why: and yet with as 
much quickness, as I could think necessary to establish a rule, and not to 
engage in homily or discourse. In the use of which rules, although they 
are plain, useful, and fitted for the best and worst understandings, and for 
the needs of all men, yet I shall desire the reader to proceed with the fol¬ 
lowing advices. 


DEDICATION. 


Ill 


1. They that will with profit make use of the proper instruments of virtue, 
must so live, as if they were always under the physician’s hand. For the 
counsels of religion are not to be applied to the distempers of the soul, as 
men used to take hellebore; but they must dwell together with the spirit of 
a man, and be twisted about his understanding for ever: they must be used 
like nourishment, that is, by a daily care and meditation; not like a single 
medicine, and upon the actual pressure of a present necessity. For counsels 
and w ise discourses, applied to an actual distemper, at the best are but like 
strong smells to an epileptic person; sometimes they may raise him, but they 
never cure him. The following rules, if they be made familiar to our 
natures and the thoughts of every day, may make virtue and religion become 
easy and habitual; but when the temptation is present, ana hath already 
seized upon some portions of our consent, we are not so apt to be counselled, 
and w r e find no gust or relish in the precept; the lessons are the same, but 
the instrument is unstrung or out of tune. 

2. In using the instruments of virtue, we must be curious to distinguish 
instruments from duties, and prudent advices from necessary injunctions; 
and if by any other means the duty can be secured, let there be no scruples 
stirred concerning any other helps : only, if they can, in that case, strengthen 
and secure the duty, or help tow'ards perseverance, let them serve in that 
station in which they can be placed. For there are some persons, in whom 
the Spirit of God hath breathed so bright a flame of love, that they do all 
their acts of virtue by perfect choice and without objection, and their zeal is 
warmer, than that it w 7 ill be allayed by temptation: and to such persons 
mortification by philosophical instruments, as fasting, sackloth, and other 
rudenesses to the body, is wholly useless; it is always a more uncertain 
means to acquire any virtue, or secure any duty; and if love hath filled ah 
the corners of our soul, it alone is able to do all the work of God. 

3. Be not nice in stating the obligations of religion; but where the duty 
is necessary, and the means very reasonable in itself, dispute not too busily, 
whether, in all circumstances, it can fit thy particular; but “super totam 
materiam,” upon the whole, make use of it. For it is a good sign of a great 
religion, and no imprudence, when we have sufficiently considered the 
substance of affairs, then to be easy, humble, obedient, apt, and credulous in 
the circumstances, which are appointed to us, in particular, by our spiritual 
guides; or, in general, by all wise men in cases not unlike. He that gives 
alms, does best not always to consider the minutes and strict measures of 
his ability, but to give freely, incuriously, and abundantly. A man must 
not weigh grains in the accounts of his repentance; but for a great sin have 
a great sorrow, and a great severity, and in this take the ordinary advices; 
though, it may be, a less rigour might not be insufficient : eexf i/ZoSix.xtov 9 01 
arithmetical measures, especially of our own proportioning, are but argu¬ 
ments of want of love and of forwardness in religion ; or else are instruments 
of scruple, and then become dangerous. Use the rule heartily and enough, 
and there will be no harm in thy error, if any should happen- 

4. If thou intendest heartily to serve God, and avoid sin in any one in¬ 
stance, refuse not the hardest and most severe advice, that is prescribed in 
order to it, though possibly it be a stranger to thee; for whatsoever it be, 
custom will make it easy. 

5. When many instruments for the obtaining any virtue, or restraining 
any vice, are propounded, observe which of them fits thy person, or the 
circumstances of thy need, and use it rather than the other; that by this 
means thou mayest be engaged to watch, and use spiritual arts and observa¬ 
tion about thy soul. Concerning the managing of which, as the interest is 
greater, so the necessities are more, and the cases more intricate, and the 
accidents and dangers greater and more importunate ; and there is greater 
skill required, than in the securing an estate, or restoring health to an infirm 
body. I wish all men in the world did heartily believe so much of this, as 
is true; it would very much help to do the work of God. 


IV 


DEDICATION. 


Thus, my Lord, I have made bold by your hand to reach out this little 
scroll of cautions to all those, who, by seeing your honoured names set be¬ 
fore my book, shall, by the fairness of such a frontispiece, be invited to look 
into it. I must confess, it cannot but look like a design in me, to borrow 
your name and beg your patronage to my book, that, if there be no other 
worth in it, yet at least it may have the splendour and warmth of a burning- 
glass, which, borrowing a flame from the eye of Heaven, shines and bums 
by the ra} s of the sun its patron. I will not quit myself from the suspicion: 
for I cannot pretend it to be a present either of itself fit to be offered to such 
a personage, or any part of a just return; but I humbly desire, you would 
own it for an acknowledgment of those great endearments and noblest 
usages, you have past upon me: but so, men in their religion give a piece of 
gum, or the fat of a cheap lamb, in sacrifice to Him, that gives them all that 
they have or need: and unless He, who was pleased to employ your Lord- 
ship, as a great minister of his providence, in making a promise of his good to 
me, the meanest of his servants, “ that he would never leave me nor forsake 
me,” shall enable me, by greater services of religion, to pay my great debt 
to your honour, I must still increase my score; since I shall now spend as 
much in my needs of pardon for this boldness, as in the reception of those 
favours, by which I stand accountable to your Lordship in all the bands of 
service and gratitude; though I am, in the deepest sense of duty and affec¬ 
tion, my most honoured Lord, your Honour’s most obliged and most humble 
Servant, 


JER. TAYLOR. 


THE 


RULE AND EXERCISES 

OF 

HOLY LIVING, &c. 


CHAPTER I. 

CONSIDERATION OF THE GENERAL INSTRUMENTS AND MEANS 
SERVING TO A HOLY LIFE, BY WAY - OF INTRODUCTION. 

IT is necessary, that every man should consider, that, 
since God hath given him an excellent nature, wisdom, 
and choice, an understanding soul, and an immortal spirit, 
having made him lord over the beasts, and but a little lower 
than the angels; he hath also appointed for him a work 
and a service great enough to employ those abilities, and 
hath also designed him to a state of life after this, to which 
he can only arrive by that service and obedience. And 
therefore, as every man is wholly God’s own portion by the 
title of creation, so all our labours and care, all our powers 
and faculties, must be wholly employed in the service of 
God, even all the days of our life; that, this life being 
ended, we may live with him for ever. 

Neither is it sufficient that we think of the service of 
God as a work of the least necessity, or of small employ¬ 
ment, but that it be done by us as God intended it; that it 
be done with great earnestness and passion, with much zeal 
and desire ; that we refuse no labour: that we bestow upon 
it much time; that we use the best guides, and arrive at 
the end of glory by all the ways of grace, of prudence, and 
religion. 

And indeed,-if we consider how much of our lives is 
taken up by the needs of nature; how many years are 
wholly spent, before we come to any use of reason: how 
many years more, before that reason is useful to us to any 
great purposes; how imperfect our discourse is made by 



6 


INTRODUCTION TO HOLY LIFE. 


our evil education, false principles, ill company, bad exam* 
pies, and want of experience ; how many parts of our 
wisest and best years are spent in eating and sleeping, in 
necessary businesses and unnecessary vanities, in worldly 
civilities and less useful circumstances, in the learning arts 
and sciences, languages or trades; that little portion of 
hours, that is left for the practice of piety and religious 
walking with God, is so short and trifling, that, were not 
the goodness of God infinitely great, it might seem unrea¬ 
sonable or impossible for us to expect of him eternal joyg 
in heaven, even after the well spending those few minutes, 
which are left for God and God’s service, after we have 
served ourselves and our own occasions. 

And yet it is considerable, that the fruit, which comes 
from the many days of recreation and vanity, is very little ; 
and, although we scatter much, yet we gather but little 
profit: but from the few hours we spend in prayer and the 
exercises of a pious life, the return is great and profitable ; 
and what we sow in the minutes and spare portions of a 
few years, grows up to crowns and sceptres in a happy and 
a glorious eternity. 

1. Therefore, although it cannot be enjoined, that the 
greatest part of our time be spent in the direct actions of 
devotion and religion, yet it will become, not only a duty, 
but also a great providence, to lay aside for the services of 
God and the business of the Spirit, as much as we can ; 
because God rewards our minutes with long and eternal 
happiness ; and the greater portion of our time we give to 
God, the more we treasure up for ourselves; and “ No man 
is a better merchant than he, that lays out his time upon 
God, and his money upon Jhe poor.” 

2. Only it becomes us to remember, and to adore God’s 
goodness for it, that God hath not only permitted us to 
serve the necessities of our nature, but hath made them to 
become parts of our duty; that if we, by directing these 
actions to the glory of God, intend them as instruments to 
continue our persons in his service, he, by adopting them 
into religion, may turn our nature into grace, and accept 
our natural actions as actions of religion. God is pleased 
to esteem it for a part of his service, if we eat or drink; so 
it be done temperately, and as may best preserve our health, 
that our health may enable our services towards him : and 
there is no one minute of our lives (after we are come to 


CARE OF OUR TIME. 


7 


the use of reason,) but we are or may be doing the work 
of God, even then, when we most of all serve ourselves. 

3. To which if we add, that in these and all other actions 
of our lives we always stand before God, acting and speak¬ 
ing, and thinking in his presence, and that it matters not 
that our conscience is sealed with secrecy, since it lies open 
to God; it will concern us to behave ourselves carefully, 
as in the presence of our judge. 

These three considerations rightly managed, and applied 
to the several parts and instances of our lives, will be like 
Elisha, stretched upon the child, apt to put life and quick¬ 
ness into every part of it, and to make us live the life of 
grace, and do the work of God. 

I shall therefore, by way of introduction, reduce these 
three to practice, and show how every Christian may im¬ 
prove all and each of these to the advantage of piety, in 
the whole course of his life; that if he please to bear but 
one of them upon his spirit, he may feel the benefit, like 
a universal instrument, helpful in all spiritual and tempora. 
actions. 

SECTION I. 

The first general instrument of holy Living , 

Care of our Time . 

He that is choice of his time, will also be choice of his 
company, and choice of his actions : lest the first engage 
him in vanity and loss ; and the latter, by being criminal, 
be a throwing his time and himself away, and a going back 
in the accounts of eternity. 

God has given to man a short time here upon earth, and 
yet upon this short time eternity depends: but so, that for 
every hour of our life (after we are persons capable of laws, 
and know good from evil) we must give account to the 
great Judge of men and angels. And this is it which our 
blessed Saviour told us, that we must account for every 
idle word; not meaning that every word, which is not de¬ 
signed to edification, or is less prudent, shall be reckoned 
for a sin ; but that the time, which we spend in our idle 
talking and unprofitable discoursings, that time, which might 
and ought to have been employed to spiritual and useful 
purposes ; that is to be accounted for. 

For we must remember, that we have a great work to do, 
many enemies to conquer, many evils to prevent, much 


8 


CARR OF OUR TIME. 


danger to run through, many difficulties to be mastered 
many necessities to serve, and much good to do, many chil¬ 
dren to provide for, or many friends to support, or many 
poor to relieve, or many diseases to cure, besides the needs 
of nature and of relation, our private and our public cares, 
and duties of the world, which necessity and the providence 
of God have adopted into the family of religion. 

And that we need not fear this instrument to be a snare 
to us, or that the duty must end in scruple, vexation, and 
eternal fears, we must remember, that the life of every man 
may be so ordered (and indeed must,) that it may be a per¬ 
petual serving of God : the greatest trouble and most busy 
trade and worldly incumbrances, when they are necessary, 
or charitable, or profitable in order to any of those ends, 
which we are bound to serve, whether public or private, 
being a doing God’s work. For God provides the good 
things of the world to serve the needs of nature, by the 
labours of the ploughman, the skill and pains of the artisan, 
And the dangers and traffic of the merchant: these men 
are, in their callings, the ministers of the Divine Providence 
and the stewards of the creation, and servants of a great 
family of God, the world, in the employment of procuring 
necessaries for food and clothing, ornament, and physic. 
In their proportions, also, a king, and a priest and a prophet, 
a judge and an advocate, doing the works of their employ¬ 
ment, according to their proper rules, are doing the work of 
God, because they serve those necessities, which God hath 
made, and yet made no provisions for them, but by their mi¬ 
nistry. So that no man can complain, that his calling takes 
him off from religion ; his calling itself and his very worldly 
employment in honest trade and offices is a serving of God ; 
and, if it be moderately pursued and according to the rules 
of Christian prudence, will leave void spaces enough for 
prayers and retirements of a more spiritual religion. 

God hath given every man work enough to do, that there 
shall be no room for idleness; and yet hath so ordered the 
world, that there shall be space for devotion. He, that 
hath the fewest businesses of the world, is called upon tc 
spend more time in the dressing of his soul; and he, that 
hath the most affairs, may so order them, that they shall be a 
service of God; whilst, at certain periods, they are blessed 
with prayers and actions of religion, and all day long are 
hallowed by a holy intention. 


CARE OF OUR TIME 


9 


However, so long* as idleness is quite shut out from our 
liv es, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy, 
are prevented, and there is but little room left for tempta¬ 
tion; and therefore, to a busy man, temptation is fain to 
climb up together with his business, and sins creep upon 
him only by accidents and occasions; whereas, to an idle 
person, they come in a full body, and with open violence 
and the impudence of a restless importunity. 

Idleness is called “ the sin of Sodom and her daugh¬ 
ters,”* and indeed is “ the burial of a living man ;” an idle 
person being so useless to any purposes of God and man, 
that he is like one that is dead, unconcerned in the changes 
and necessities of the world; and he only lives to spend 
his time, and eat the fruits of the earth : like a vermin or 
a wolf, when their time comes, they die and perish, and in 
the mean time, do no good; they neither plough nor carry 
burthens ; all that they do is either unprofitable or mis¬ 
chievous. 

Idleness is the greatest prodigality in the world : it 
throws away that, which is invaluable in respect of its pre¬ 
sent use, and irreparable when it is past, being to be reco¬ 
vered by no power of art or nature. But the way to secure 
and improve our time we may practice in the following 
rules. 

Rules for employing our Time . 

1. In the morning, when you awake, accustom yourself 
to think first upon God, or something in order to his ser¬ 
vice ; and at night also, let him close thine eyes: and let 
your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expen¬ 
sive of time, beyond the needs and conveniences of nature ; 
and sometimes be curious to see the preparation, which the 
sun makes, when he is coming forth from his chambers of 
the east. 

2. Let every man that hath a calling, be diligent in pur¬ 
suance of its employment, so as not lightly or without 
reasonable occasion to neglect it in any of those times, 
which are usually, and by the custom of prudent persons 
and good husbands, employed in it. 

3. Let all the intervals or void spaces of time be em 
ployed in prayers, reading, meditating, works of nature, 
recreation, charity, friendliness, and neighbourhood, and 
means of spiritual and corporal health ; ever remembering 

* Ezek. xvi. 4ft 


10 


CARE OF OUR TIME. 


so to work in our calling, as not to neglect the work of oui 
high calling; but to begin and end the day with God, with 
such forms of devotion as shall be proper to our necessities. 

4. The resting days of Christians, and festivals of the 
church, must, in no sense, be days of idleness ; for it is 
better to plough upon holy days, than to do nothing or to 
do viciously: but let them be spent in the works of the 
day, that is, of religion and charity, according to the rules 
appointed.* 

5. Avoid the company of drunkards and busy bodies, 
and all such as are apt to talk much to little purpose : for 
no man can be provident of his time, that is not prudent 
in the choice of his company ; and if one of the speakers 
be vain, tedious, and trifling, he that hears, and he that an¬ 
swers, in the discourse, are equal losers of their time. 

6. Never talk with any man, or undertake any trifling 
employment, merely to pass the time away; for every day 
well spent may become a “day of salvation,” and time 
rightly employed is an “ acceptable time.” And remember, 
that the time thou triflest away, was given thee to repent 
in, to pray for pardon of sins, to work out thy salvation, to 
do the work of grace, to lay up against the day of judgment 
a treasure of good works, that thy time may be crowned 
with eternity. 

7. In the midst of the works of thy calling, often retire 
to God in short prayers and ejaculations; and those may 
make up the want of those larger portions of time, which, 
it may be, thou desirest for devotion, and in which thou 
thinkest other persons have advantage of thee; for so thou 
reconcilest the outward work and thy inward calling, the 
church and the commonwealth, the employment of the body 
and the interest of thy soul: for be sure, that God is pre¬ 
sent at thy breathings and hearty sighings of prayer, as 
soon as at the longer offices of less busied persons; and 
thy time is as truly sanctified by a trade, and devout though 
shorter prayers, as by the longer offices of those, whose 
time is not filled up with labour and useful business. 

8. Let your employment be such, as may become a rea¬ 
sonable person ; and not be a business fit for children or 
distracted people, but fit for your age and understanding. 
For a man may be very idly busy, and take great pains to 
so little purpose, that, in his labour and expense of time, 

* See Chap. iv. Sect. 6. 


CARE OF OUR TIME. 


II 


Re shall serve no end but of folly and vanity. Theie ^re some 
trades, that wholly serve the ends of idle persons and fools, 
and such as are fit to be seized upon by the severity of laws, 
and banished from under the sun ; and there are some people 
who are busy; but it is, as Domitian was, in catching flies. 

9. Let your employment be fitted to your person and 
calling. Some there are, that employ their time in affairs 
infinitely below the dignity of their person ; and being 
called by God or by the republic, to help to bear great 
burdens, and to judge a people, do enfeeble their under¬ 
standings, and disable their persons by sordid and brutish 
business. Thus Nero went up and down Greece, and 
challenged the fiddlers at their trade, .Lropus, a Mace¬ 
donian king, made lanterns. Harcatius, the king of Par- 
thia, was a mole-catcher: and Biantes, the Lydian, filed 
needles. He, that is appointed to minister in holy things, 
must not suffer secular affairs and sordid arts to eat up 
great portions of his employment: a clergyman must not 
keep a tavern, nor a judge be an innkeeper : and it was a 
great idleness in Theophylact, the patriarch of C. P. to 
spend his time in his stable of horses, when he should have 
been in his study, or the pulpit, or saying his holy offices. 
Such employments are the diseases of labour, and the rust 
of time, which it contracts, not by lying still, but by dirty 
employment. 

10. Let your employment be such as becomes a Chris¬ 
tian ; that is, in no sense, mingled with sin : for he that 
takes pains to serve the ends of covetousness, or ministers 
to another’s lust, or keeps a shop of impurities or intem¬ 
perance, is idle in the worst sense ; for every hour so spent, 
runs him backward, and must be spent again in the remain¬ 
ing and shorter part of his life, and spent better. 

11. Persons of great quality, and of no trade, are to be 
most prudent and curious in their employment and traffic 
of time. They are miserable, if their education hath been 
so loose and undisciplined, as to leave them unfurnished of 
skill to spend their time : but most miserable are they, if 
such misgovernment and unskilfulness make them fall into 
vicious and baser company, and drive on their time by the 
sad minutes and periods of sin and death. They that are 
learned, know the worth of time, and the manner how well 
to improve a day ; and they are to prepare themselves for 
such purposes, in which they may be most useful in order 


12 


CARE OF OUR TIME 


to arts or arms, to counsel in public, or government in theii 
country: but for others of them, that are unlearned, lei 
them choose good company, such as may not tempt them 
1o a vice, or join with them in any; but that may supply 
their defects by counsel and discourse, by way of conduct 
and conversation. Let them learn easy and useful things 
read history and the laws of the land, learn the custom? 
of their country, the condition of their own estate, profit¬ 
able and charitable contrivances of it: let them stud) 
prudently to govern their families, learn the burdens ol 
their tenants, the necessities of their neighbours, and ir 
their proportion supply them, and reconcile their enmities 
and prevent their lawsuits, or quickly end them; and ir 
this glut of leisure and disemployment, let them set apar» 
greater portions of their time for religion and the neces 
sities of their souls. 

12. Let the women of noble birth and great fortunes dc 
the same things in their proportions and capacities, nurst 
their children, look to the affairs of the house, visit poo) 
cottagers, and relieve their necessities, be courteous to the 
neighbourhood, learn in silence of their husbands or thei. 
spiritual guides, read good books, pray often and speak 
little, and “ learn to do good works for necessary uses 
for, by that phrase, St. Paul expresses the obligation of 
Christian women to good housewifery, and charitable pro¬ 
visions for their family and neighbourhood. 

13. Let all persons of all conditions avoid all delicacy 
and niceness in their clothing or diet, because such soft¬ 
ness engages them upon great mispendings of their time, 
while they dress and comb out all their opportunities of 
their morning devotion, and half the day’s severity, and 
sleep out the care and provision for their souls. 

14. Let every one of every condition avoid curiosity, and 
all inquiry into things that concern them not. For all 
business in things, that concern us not, is an employing 
our time to no good of ours, and therefore not in order to 
a happy eternity. In this account our neighbours’ neces¬ 
sities are not to be reckoned ; for they concern us, as one 
member is concerned in the grief of another; but going 
from house to house, tattlers and busy-bodies, which are 
the canker and rust of idleness, as idleness is the rust of 
time, are reproved by the apostle in severe language, and 
forbidden in order to this exercise. 


CARE OF OUR TIME. 


13 


15. As much as may be, cut off all impertinent and useless 
employments of your life, unnecessary and fantastic visits, 
long waitings upon great personages, where neither duty, 
nor necessity, nor charity obliges us ; all vain meetings, all 
laborous trifles, and whatsoever spends much time to no real, 
civil, religious, or charitable purpose. 

16. Let not your recreations be lavish spenders of your 
time ; but choose such which are healthful, short, transient, 
recreative, and apt to refresh you: but at no hand dwell 
upon them, or make them your great employment: for he 
that spends his time in sports, and calls it recreation, is like 
him whose garment is all made of fringes, and his meat 
nothing but sauces; they are healthless, chargeable, and 
useless. And therefore avoid such games, which require 
much time, or long attendance; or which are apt to steal 
thy affections from more severe employments. For to 
whatsoever thou hast given thy affections, thou wilt not 
grudge to give thy time. Natural necessity and the ex¬ 
ample of St. John, who recreated himself with sporting with 
a tame partridge, teach us, that it is lawful to relax and 
unbend our bow, but not to suffer it to be unready or un¬ 
strung. 

17. Set apart some portions of every day for more so¬ 
lemn devotion and religious employment, which be severe 
in observing : and if variety of employment, or prudent af¬ 
fairs, or civil society, press upon you, yet so order thy rule, 
that the necessary parts of it be not omitted; and though 
just occasions may make our prayers shorter, yet let no¬ 
thing but a violent, sudden, and impatient necessity, make 
thee, upon any one day, wholly to omit thy morning and 
evening devotions; which if you be forced to make very 
short, you may supply and lengthen with ejaculations and 
short retirements in the day-time, in the midst of your em¬ 
ployment or of your company. 

18. Do not the “work of God negligently”* and idly: 
let not thy heart be upon the world, when thy hand is lift 
up in prayer ; and be sure to prefer an action of religion, in 
its place and proper season, before all worldly pleasure, 
letting secular things, that may be dispensed with in them¬ 
selves, in these circumstances wait upon the other: not 
like the patriarch, who ran from the altar in St. Sophia to 
his stable, in all his pontificals, and in the midst of his 

* Jer. xlviii. 10. 


T) 


14 


CARE OF OUR TIME. 


office, to see a colt newly fallen from his beloved and much- 
valued mare Phorbante. More prudent and severe was 
that of Sir Thomas More, who, being sent for by the king, 
when he was at his prayers in public, returned answer, he 
would attend him, when he had first performed his service 
to the King of kings. And it did honour to Rusticus, that, 
when letters from Caesar were given to him, he refused to 
open them, till the philosopher had done his lecture. In 
honouring God and doing his work, put forth all thy 
strength; for of that time only thou mayest be most con¬ 
fident that it is gained, which is prudently and zealously 
spent in God’s service. 

19. When the clock strikes, or however else you shall 
measure the day, it is good to say a short ejaculation every 
hour, that the parts and returns of devotion may be the 
ftieasure of your time: and do so also in all the breaches 
of thy sleep; that those spaces, which have in them no di¬ 
rect business of the world, may be filled with religion. 

20. If, by thus doing, you have not secured your time 
by an early and fore-handed care, yet be sure by a timely 
diligence to redeem the time, that is, to be pious and reli¬ 
gious in such instances, in which formerly you have sinned, 
and to bestow your time especially upon such graces, the 
contrary whereof you have formerly practised, doing actions 
of chastity and temperance with as great a zeal and earnest¬ 
ness, as you did once act your uncleanness ; and then, by 
all arts, to watch against your present and future dangers, 
from day to day securing your standing; this is properly to 
redeem your time, that is, to buy your security of it, at the 
rate of any labour and honest arts. 

21. Let him, that is most busied, set apart some “so¬ 
lemn time every year,”* in which, for the time, quitting all 
worldly business, he may attend wholly to fasting and prayer, 
and the dressing of his soul by confessions, meditations, and 
attendances upon God; that he may make up his accounts, 
renew his vows, make amends for his carelessness, and retire 
back again, from whence levity and the vanities of the world, 
or the opportunity of temptations, or the distraction of secu¬ 
lar affairs, have carried him. 

22. In this we shall be much assisted, and we shall find 
*he work more easy, if, before we sleep, every night we ex 
unine the actions of the past day with a particular scru 

* 1 Cor. vii. 5 


CARE OF OUR TIME. 


15 


tiny, if there have been any accident extraordinary; as 
long discourse, a feast, much business, variety of com¬ 
pany. If nothing but common hath happened, the less 
examination will suffice: only let us take care, that we 
sleep not without such ar recollection of the actions of the 
day, as may represent any thing that is remarkable and 
great, either to be the matter of sorrow or thanksgiving: for 
other things a general care is proportionable. 

23. Let all these things be done prudently and mode¬ 
rately, not with scruple and vexation. For these are good 
advantages, but the particulars are not divine command¬ 
ments ; and therefore are to be used, as shall be found 
expedient to every one’s condition. For, provided that 
our duty be secured, for the degrees and for the instruments 
every man is permitted to himself and the conduct of such 
who shall be appointed to him. He is happy, that can se¬ 
cure every hour to a sober or a pious employment: but 
the duty consists not scrupulously in minutes and half 
hours, but in greater portions of time; provided that no 
minute be employed in sin, and the great portions of our 
time be spent in sober employment, and all the appointed 
days, and some portions of every day, be allowed fox reli¬ 
gion. In all the lesser parts of time, we are left to our 
own elections and prudent management, and to the consi¬ 
deration of the great degrees and differences of glory, that 
are laid up in heaven for us, according to the degrees of our 
care, and piety, and diligence. — 

The Benefits of this Exercise. 

This exercise, besides that it hath influence upon our 
whole lives, it hath a special efficacy for the preventing of, 
1. Beggarly sins, that is, those sins which idleness and 
beggary usually betray men to; such as are lying, flattery, 
stealing, and dissimulation. 2. It is a proper antidote 
against carnal sins, and such as proceed from fulness of 
bread and empciness of employment. 3. It is a great in¬ 
strument of preventing the smallest sins and irregularities 
of our life, which usually creep upon idle, disemployed, 
and curious persons. 4. It not only teaches us to avoid 
evil, but engages us upon doing good, as the proper busi¬ 
ness of all our days. 5. It prepares us so against sudden 
changes, that we shall not easily be surprised at the sud¬ 
den coming of the day of the Lord : for he, that is curious 
of his time, will not easily be unready and unfurnished. 


16 


PURITY OF INTENTION. 


SECTION II. 

The second general instrument of holy Living 
Purity of Intention. 

That we should intend and design God’s glory in every 
action we do, whether it be natural or chosen, is ex¬ 
pressed by St. Paul,* “ Whether ye eat or drink, do all to 
the glory of God.” Which rule when we observe, every 
action of nature becomes religious, and every meal is an 
act of worship, and shall have its reward in its propor¬ 
tion, as well as an act of prayer. Blessed be that good¬ 
ness and grace of God, which, out of infinite desire to glo¬ 
rify and save mankind, would make the very works of na¬ 
ture capable of becoming acts of virtue, that all our life 
time we may do him service. 

This grace is so excellent, that it sanctifies the most com¬ 
mon action of our life; and yet so necessary, that, without 
it, the very best actions of our devotion are imperfect and 
vicious. For he that prays out of custom, or gives alms 
for praise, or fasts to be accounted religious, is but a pha¬ 
risee in his devotion, and a beggar in his alms, and a hy¬ 
pocrite in his fast. But a holy end sacrifices all these 
and all other actions, which can be made holy, and gives 
distinctions to them, and procures acceptance. 

For, as to know the end distinguishes a man from a 
beast, so to choose a good end distinguishes him from an 
evil man. Hezekiah repeated his good deeds upon his sick 
bed, and obtained favour of God, but the pharisee was 
accounted insolent for doing the same thing; because this 
man did it to upbraid his brother, the other to obtain a 
mercy of God. Zacharias questioned with the angel about 
his message, and was made speechless for his incredulity; 
but the blessed Virgin Mary questioned too, and was blame¬ 
less ; for she did it to inquire after the manner of the thing, 
but he did not believe the thing itself: he doubted of 
God’s power, or the truth of the messenger ; but she, only 
of her own incapacity. This was it, which distinguished the 
mourning of David from the exclamation of Saul; the con¬ 
fession of Pharaoh from that of Manasses; the tears of 
Peter from the repentance of Judas; “ for the praise is 
not in the deed done, but in the manner of its doing. If 

* 1 Cor. x. 31. 


PURITY OF INTENTION. 


17 


a man visits his sick friend, and watches at his pillow for 
charity’s sake, and because of his old affection, we approve 
it: but if he does it in hope of legacy, he is a vulture, and 
only watches for the carcass. The same things are honest 
and dishonest: the manner of doing them, and the end of 
the design, makes the separation.” 

Holy intention is to the actions of a man that which the 
soul is to the body, or form to its matter or the root to 
the tree, or the sun to the world, or the fountain to a river, 
or the base to a pillar: for, without these, the body is a 
dead trunk, the matter is sluggish, the tree is a block, 
the world is darkness, the river is quickly dry, the pillar 
rushes into flatness and a ruin; and the action is sinful, or 
unprofitable and vain. The poor farmer, that gave a dish 
of cold water to Artaxerxes, was rewarded with a golden 
goblet; and he that gives the same to a disciple in the name 
of a disciple, shall have a crown : but if he gives water in 
despite, when the disciple needs wine or a cordial, his re¬ 
ward shall be, to want that water to cool his tongue. 

But this duty must be reduced to rules :— 

Rules for our Intentions . 

1. In every action reflect upon the end: and in your un¬ 
dertaking it, consider why you do it, and what you propound 
to yourself for a reward, and to your action as its end. 

2. Begin every action in the name of the Father, of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost: the meaning of which is, 1. 
That we be careful, that we do not the action without the 
permission or warrant of God. 2. That we design it to the 
glory of God, if not in the direct action, yet at least in its 
consequence; if not in the particular, yet at least in the 
whole order of things and accidents. 3. That it may be 
so blessed, that what you intend for innocent and holy 
purposes, may not, by any chance, or abuse, or misunder¬ 
standing of men, be turned into evil, or made the occasion 
of sin. 

3. Let every action of concernment be begun with prayer, 
.hat God would not only bless the action, but sanctify your 
purpose : and make an oblation of the action to God: holy 
and well intended actions being the best oblations and 
presents we can make to God; and, when God is entitled 
to them, he will the rather keep the fire upon the altar 
bright and shining. 

d 2 


.8 


PURITY OF INTENTION 


4. In the prosecution of the action, renew and re-enkindle 
your purpose by short ejaculations to these purposes: 
“ Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name, let 
all praise be givenand consider <c Now I am working the 
work of God : I am his servant, I am in a happy employ¬ 
ment, I am doing my master’s business, I am not at my own 
dispose, I am using his talents, and all the gain must be 
his for then be sure, as the glory is his, so the reward 
shall be thine. If thou bringest his goods home with in¬ 
crease, he will make thee ruler over cities. 

5. Have a care, that, while the altar thus sends up a 
holy fume, thou dost not suffer the birds to come and carry 
away the sacrifice: that is, let not that, which began well, 
and was intended for God’s glory, decline and end in thy 
own praise, or temporal satisfaction, or a sin. A story, 
told to represent the vileness of unchastity, is well begun; 
but if thy female auditor be pleased with thy language, and 
begins rather to like thy person for thy story, than to dis¬ 
like the crime, be watchful, lest this goodly head of gold 
descend in silver and brass, and end in iron and clay, like 
Nebuchadnezzar’s image ; for from the end it shall have its 
name and reward. 

6. If any accidental event, which was not first intended 
by thee, can come to pass, let it not be taken into thy pur¬ 
poses, not at all be made use of; as if, by telling a true 
story, you can do an ill turn to your enemy, by no means 
do it; but, when the temptation is found out, turn all thy 
enmity upon that. 

7. In every more solemn action of religion, join toge¬ 
ther many good ends, that the consideration of them may 
entertain all your affections; and that, when any one ceases, 
the purity of your intention may be supported by anothei 
supply. He that fasts only to tame a rebellious body, when 
he is provided of a remedy either in grace or nature, may 
be tempted to leave off his fasting. But he, that in his fast 
intends the mortification of every unruly appetite, and ac¬ 
customing himself to bear the yoke of the Lord, a contempt 
of the pleasures of meat and drink, humiliation of all 
wilder thoughts, obedience and humility, austerity and 
charity, and the convenience and assistance to devotion, 
and to do an act of repentance; whatever happens, will 
have reason enough to make him to continue his purpose 
and to sanctify it. And certain it is, the more good ends 


PURITY OF INTENTION 


19 


Are designed in an action, the more degrees of excellency 
the man obtains. 

8. If any temptation to spoil your purpose happens in a 
religious duty, do not presently omit the action, but rather 
strive to rectify your intention, and to mortify the tempta¬ 
tion. St. Bernard taught us this rule: for when the 
Devil, observing him to preach excellently and to do much 
benefit to his hearers, tempted him to vain glory, hoping 
that the good man, to avoid that, would cease preaching, 
he gave this answer only ; “ I neither began for thee, nei¬ 
ther for thee will I make an end.” 

9. In all actions, which are of long continuance, deliber¬ 
ation, and abode, let your holy and pious intention be 
actual; that is, that it be, by a special prayer or action, 
by a peculiar act of resignation or oblation, given to God; 
but in smaller actions, and little things and indifferent, 
fail not to secure a pious habitual intention ; that is, that it 
be included within your general care, that no action have 
an ill end ; and that it be comprehended in your general 
prayers, whereby you offer yourself and all you do, to God’s 
glory. 

10. Call not every temporal end, a defiling of thy inten¬ 
tion, but only, 1, when it contradicts any of the ends of 
God; or 2, when it is principally intended in an action of 
religion. For sometimes a temporal end is part of our duty ; 
and such are all the actions of our calling, whether our 
employment be religious or civil. We are commanded to 
provide for our family: but if the minister of divine of¬ 
fices shall take upon him that holy calling for covetous or 
ambitious ends, or shall not design the glory of God prin¬ 
cipally and especially, he hath polluted his hands and his 
heart; and the fire of the altar is quenched, or it sends 
forth nothing but the smoke of mushrooms or unpleasant 
gums. And it is a great unworthiness to prefer the interest 
of a creature before the ends of God, the Almighty Creator. 

But because many cases may happen, in which a man’s 
heart may deceive him, and he may not well know what is 
in his own spirit; therefore, by these following signs, we 
shall best make a judgment, whether our intentions be pure, 
and our purposes holy. 

Signs of Purity of Intention. 

1. It is probable our hearts* are right with God, and our 
* See Sect. T, of this Chapter, Rule 18. 


20 


PURITY OF INTENTION. 


intentions innocent and pious, if we set upon actions of reli 
gion or civil life with an affection proportionate to the quality 
of the work; that we act our temporal affairs with a desire 
no greater than our necessity; and that in actions of reli¬ 
gion, we be zealous, active, and operative, so far as prudence 
will permit; but in all cases, that we value a religious de¬ 
sign before a temporal, when otherwise they are in equal 
order to the several ends: that is, that whatsoever is ne¬ 
cessary in order to our soul’s health be higher esteemed, 
than what is for bodily ; and the necessities, the indispensa¬ 
ble necessities, of the spirit, be served before the needs of 
nature, when they are required in their several circumstances; 
or plainer yet, when we choose any temporal inconveni¬ 
ence, rather than commit a sin, and when we choose to do 
a duty, rather than to get gain. But he that does his re¬ 
creation or his merchandise cheerfully, promptly, readily, 
and busily, and the works of religion slowly, flatly, and 
without appetite ; and the spirit moves like Pharaoh’s 
chariots, when the wheels were off: it is a sign, that his 
heart is not right with God, but it cleaves too much to the 
world. 

2. It is likely our hearts are pure, and our intentions 
spotless, when we are not solicitous of the opinion and 
censures of men ; but only that what we do be our duty and 
accepted of God. For our eyes will certainly be fixed 
there, from whence we expect our reward : and if we de¬ 
sire, that God should approve us, it is a sign we do his 
work, and expect him our paymaster. 

3. He that does as well, in private, between God and 
his own soul, as in public, in pulpits, in theatres, and mar¬ 
ket places, hath given himself a good testimony, that his 
purposes are full of honesty, nobleness, and integrity. For 
what Helkanah said to the mother of Samuel, “ Am not I 
better to thee than ten sons ?” is most certainly verified 
concerning God; that he, who is to be our judge, is better 
than ten thousand witnesses. But he, that would have 
his virtue published, studies not virtue, but glory. “ He 
is not just, that will not be just without praise : but he is a 
righteous man that does justice, when to do so is made 
infamous ; and he is a wise man, who is delighted with an 
ill name, that is well gotten.” And indeed that man hath 
a strange covetousness, or folly, that is not contented with 
this reward, that he hath pleased God. And see what he 


PURITY OF INTENTION. 


2 

gets by it. He that does good works for praise or seculai 
ends, sells an inestimable jewel for a trifle; and that, 
which would purchase heaven for him, he parts with for 
the breath of the people; which, at best, is but air, and 
that not often wholesome. 

4. It is well also, when we are not solicitous or trou¬ 
bled concerning the effect and event of all our actions; 
but that being first by prayer recommended to him, is left 
at his dispose : for then, in case the event be not answer- 
able to our desires, or to the efficacy of the instrument, we 
have nothing left to rest in, but the honesty of our pur¬ 
poses ; which it is the more likely we have secured, by how 
much more we are indifferent concerning the success. St. 
James converted but eight persons, when he preached in 
Spain : and our blessed Saviour converted fewer than his 
own disciples did; and if thy labours prove unprosperous, 
if thou beest much troubled at that, it is certain thou didst 
not think thyself secure of a reward for thine intention; 
which thou mightest have done, if it had been pure and just. 

5. He loves virtue for God’s sake and its own, that 
loves and honours it, wherever it is to be seen ; but he that 
is envious or angry at a virtue, that is not his own, at the 
perfection or excellency of his neighbour, is not covetous 
of the virtue, but of its reward and reputation ; and then his 
intentions are polluted. It was a greg.t ingenuity in Moses, 
that wished all the people might be prophets; but if he had 
designed his own honour, he would have prophesied alone. 
But he that desires only, that the work of God and religion 
shall go on, is pleased with it, whosoever is the instrument. 

6. He that despises the world, and all its appendant 
vanities, is the best judge, and the most secured of his 
intentions; because he is the farthest removed from a 
temptation. Every degree of mortification is a testimony 
of the purity of our purposes ; and in what degree we de¬ 
spise sensual pleasure, or secular honours, or worldly reput¬ 
ation, in the same degree we shall conclude our heart right 
to religion and spiritual designs. 

7. When we are not solicitous concerning the instru¬ 
ments and means of our actions; but use those means, 
which God hath laid before us, with resignation, indiffe- 
rency, and thankfulness ; it is a good sign, that we are 
rather intent upon the end of God’s glory, than our own 
tonveniency, or temporal satisfaction. He that is indiffe- 


22 


PURITY OF INTENTION. 


rent whether he serve God in riches or in poverty, is rathei 
a seeker of God than of himself; and he that will throw 
away a good book because it is not curiously gilded, is more 
curious to please his eye, than to inform his understanding. 

8 When a temporal end consisting with a spiritual, and 
pretending to be subordinate to it, happens to fail and be 
defeated, if we can rejoice in that, so God’s glory may be 
secured, and the interests of religion; it is a great sign 
our hearts are right, and our ends prudently designed and 
ordered. 

When our intentions are thus balanced, regulated, and 
discerned, we may consider, 1. That this exercise is c f so 
universal efficacy in the wffiole course of a holy life, that it 
is like the soul of every holy action, and must be provided 
for in every undertaking; and is, of itself alone, sufficient 
to make all natural and indifferent actions to be adopted 
into the family of religion. 

2. That there are some actions, which are usually reck¬ 
oned as parts of our religion, which yet, of themselves, are 
so relative and imperfect, that, without the purity of inten¬ 
tion, they degenerate: and unless they be directed and 
proceed on to those purposes, which God designed them 
to, they return into the family of common, secular, or sin¬ 
ful actions. Thus, alms are for the charity, fasting for tem¬ 
perance, prayer is for* religion, humiliation is for humility, 
austerity or sufferance is in order to the virtue of patience; 
and when these actions fail of their several ends, or are 
not directed to their own purposes, alms are mispent, fast¬ 
ing is an impertinent trouble, prayer is but lip-labour, hu¬ 
miliation is but hypocrisy, sufferance is but vexation ; for 
such were the alms of the pharisee, the fast of Jezabel, the 
prayer of Judah reproved by the prophet Isaiah, the humi¬ 
liation of Ahab, the martyrdom of heretics; in which no¬ 
thing is given to God, but the body, or the forms of religion ; 
but the soul and the power of godliness is wholly wanting. 

3. We are to consider, that no intention can satisfy an 
unholy or unlawful action. Saul, the king, disobeyed 
God’s commandment, and spared the cattle of Amalek to 
reserve the best for sacrifice : and Saul, the Pharisee, per¬ 
secuted the church of God, with a design to do God ser¬ 
vice : and they that killed the apostles, had also good pui- 
poses, but they had unhallowed actions. “ When there 
is both truth in election, and charity in the intention; 


PRACTICE OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 


23 

.vhen we go to God in ways of his own choosing or ap 
proving, then our eye is single, and our hands are clean, 
and our hearts are pure. But when a man does evil, that 
good may come of it, or good to an evil purpose, that man 
does like him, that rolls himself in thorns, that he may 
sleep easily; he roasts himself in the fire, that he may 
quench his thirst with his own sweat; he turns his face to 
the east, that he may go to bed with the sun. I end this 
with the saying of a wise heathen : “ He is to be called 
evil, that is good only for his own sake. Regard not, how 
full hands you bring to God, but how pure. Many cease 
trom sin out of fear alone, not out of innocence or love of 
virtue;” and they, as yet, are not to be called innocent but 
timorous. 

SECTION III. 

The third general instrument of holy Living: or the 
Practice of the Presence of God . 

That God is present in all places, that he sees every ac¬ 
tion, hears all discourses, and understands every thought, 
is no strange thing to a Christian ear, who hath been taught 
this doctrine, not only by right reason, and the consent of 
all the wise men in the world, but also by God himself in 
holy Scripture. “ Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, 
and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret 
places, that I shall not see him ? saith the Lord. Do not 
I fill heaven and earth ?”* “ Neither is there any creature, 
that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked 
and open to the eyes of him, with whom we have to do.”f 
“ For in him we live, and move, and have our being.”:}: 
God is wholly in every place; included in no place; not 
bound with cords except those of love; not divided into 
parts, not changeable into several shapes; filling heaven 
and earth with his present power, and with his never ab¬ 
sent nature. So St. Augustine expresses this article. So 
that we may imagine God to be as the air and the sea: 
and we all enclosed in his circle, wrapped up in the lap of 
his infinite nature ; or as infants in the wombs of their 
pregnant mothers: and we can no more be removed from 
the presence of God, than from our being. 

* Jer. xxiii. 23, 24. t Heb. iv. 13. t Acts vii 28. 


PRACTICE OF THE 


Several Manners of the Divine Presence. 

The presence of God is understood by us, in severa 
manners, and to several purposes. 

1. God is present by his essence ; which, because it is 
infinite, cannot be contained within the limits ot any place ; 
and because he is of an essential purity and spiritual na¬ 
ture, he cannot be undervalued by being supposed present 
in the places of unnatural uncleanness: because as the sun, 
reflecting upon the mud of strands and shores, is unpol¬ 
luted in its beams, so is God not dishonoured, when we 
suppose him in every of his creatures, and in every part of 
every one of them; and is still as unmixt with any un¬ 
handsome adherence, as is the soul in the bowels of the 
body. 

2. God is every where present by his power. He rolls 
the orbs of heaven with his hand; he fixes the earth with 
his foot; he guides all the creatures with his eye, and re¬ 
freshes them with his influence: he makes the powers of 
hell shake with his terrors, and binds the devils with his 
word, and throws them out with his command; and sends 
the angels on embassies with his decrees: he hardens the 
joints of infants, and confirms the bones, when they are 
fashioned beneath secretly in the earth. He it is, that as¬ 
sists at the numerous productions of fishes ; and there is 
not one hollowness in the bottom of the sea, but he shows 
himself to be Lord of it, by sustaining there the creatures 
that come to dwell in it: and in the wilderness, the bittern 
and the stork, the dragon and the satyr, the unicorn and the 
elk live upon his provisions, and revere his power, and feel 
the force of his almightiness. 

3. God is more specially present, in some places, by 
the several and more special manifestations of himself to 
extraordinary purposes. First, by glory. Thus, his seat 
is in heaven; because, there he sits encircled with all the 
outward demonstrations of his glory, which he is pleased 
to show to all the inhabitants of those his inward and secret 
courts. And thus they, that “ die in the Lord, may be 
properly said to be “gone to God;” with whom although 
they were before, yet now they enter into his courts, into 
the secret of his tabernacle, into the retinue and splendour 
of his glory. That is called walking with God • but this 
is dwelling, or being with him. “ I desire to be dissolved 


PRESENCE OF GOD. 


25 


and to be with Christso said St. Paul. But this man¬ 
ner of Divine presence is reserved for the elect people of 
God, and for their portion in their country. 

4. God is, by grace and benediction, specially present 
in holy places,* and in the solemn assemblies of his ser¬ 
vants. If holy people meet in grots and dens of the earth, 
when persecution or a public necessity disturbs the public 
order, circumstance, and convenience, God fails not to 
come thither to them : but God is also, by the same or a 
greater reason, present there, where they meet ordinarily, 
by order, and public authority ; there God is present or¬ 
dinarily, that is, at every such meeting. God will go out 
of his way to meet his saints, when themselves are forced 
out of their way of order by a sad necessity : but else, 
God’s usual way is to be present in those places, where his 
servants are appointed ordinarily^ to meet. But his pre¬ 
sence there signifies nothing, but a readiness to hear their 
prayers, to bless their persons, to accept their offices, and 
to like even the circumstance of orderly and public meeting. 
For thither the prayers of consecration, the public autho¬ 
rity separating it, and God’s love of order, and the reason¬ 
able customs of religion, have, in ordinary, and in a certain 
degree, fixed this manner of his presence; and he loves to 
have it so. 

5. God is especially present, in the hearts of his people, 
by his Holy Spirit; and indeed the hearts of holy men are 
temples in the truth of things, and, in type, and shadow, 
they are heaven itself. For God reigns in the hearts of 
his servants: there is his kingdom. The power of grace 
hath subdued all his enemies; there is his power. They 
serve him night and day, and give him thanks and praise; 
that is his glory. This is the religion and worship of 
God in the temple. The temple itself is the heart of 
man ; Christ is the high-priest, who from thence sends 
up the incense of prayers, and joins them to his own 
intercession, and presents all together to his Father; 
and the Holy Ghost, by his dwelling there, hath also 
consecrated it into a temple and God dwells in our 
hearts by faith, and Christ by his Spirit, and the Spirit by 
his purities; so that we are also cabinets of the mysterious 
Trinity ; and what is this short of heaven itself, but as in- 

* Mat xviii. 20. Heb. x. 25. t 1 Kings v. 9. Ps. cxxxviii. 1, 2. 
t 1 Cor. iii. 16. 2 Cor. vi. 16. 

E 


PRACTICE OF THE 


fancy is short of manhood, and letters of words? The same 
state of life it is, but not the same age. It is heaven in a 
looking-glass, dark, but yet true, representing the beauties 
of the soul, and the graces of God, and the images of his 
eternal glory, by the reality of a special presence. 

6. God is especially present in the consciences of all 
persons, good and bad, by way of testimony and judgment: 
that is, he is there a remembrancer to call our actions to 
mind, a witness to bring them to judgment, and a judge to 
acquit or to condemn. And although this manner of pre¬ 
sence is, in this life, after the manner of this life, that is, 
imperfect, and we forget many actions of our lives ; yet 
the greatest changes of our state of grace or sin, our most 
considerable actions, are always present, like capital letters 
to an aged and dim eye : and, at the day of judgment, God 
shall draw aside the cloud, and manifest this manner of his 
presence more notoriously, and make it appear, that he was 
an observer of our very thoughts, and that he only laid 
those things by, which, because we covered with dust and 
negligence, were not then discerned. But when we are 
risen from our dust and imperfection, they all appear plain 
and legible. 

Now the consideration of this great truth is of a very 
universal use, in the whole course of the life of a Christian. 
All the consequents and effects of it are universal. He 
that remembers, that God stands a witness and a judge, 
beholding every secrecy, besides his impiety, must have 
put on impudence, if he be not much restrained in his 
temptation to sin. “ For the greatest part of sin is taken 
away, if a man have a witness of his conversation : and he 
is a great despiser of God, who sends a boy away, when he 
is going to commit fornication, and yet will dare to do it, 
though he knows God is present, and cannot be sent off: 
as if the eye of a little boy were more awful, than the all- 
seeing eye of God. He is to be feared in public, he is to 
be feared in private : if you go forth, he spies you ; if you 
go in, he sees you : when you light the candle, he observes 
you; when you put it out, then also God marks you. Be 
sure that while you are in his sight, you behave yourself, 
as becomes so holy a presence.” But if you will sin, retire 
yourself wisely, and go where God cannot see : for no where 
else can you be safe. And certainly, if men would always 
actually consider, and really esteem this truth, that God is 


PRESENCE OF GOD. 


27 

the great eye of the world, always watching over our actions, 
and an ever-open ear to hear all our words, and an un¬ 
wearied arm ever lifted up to crush a sinner into ruin, it 
would be *he. readiest way in the world, to make sin to 
cease from amongst the children of men, and for men to 
approach to the blessed estate of the saints in heaven, who 
cannot sin, for they always walk in the presence, and behold 
the face of God. This instrument is to be reduced to 
practice, according to the following rules. 

Rules of exercising this consideration. 

1. Let this actual thought often return, that God is 
omnipresent, filling every place; and say, with David,* 
“ Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall l flee 
from thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven thou art 
there : if I make my bed in hell thou art there,” &c. This 
thought, by being frequent, will make an habitual dread and 
reverence towards God, and fear in all thy actions. For it 
is a great necessity and engagement to do unblamably, 
when we act before the Judge, who is infallible in his sen¬ 
tence, all-knowing in his information, severe in his anger, 
powerful in his providence, and intolerable in his wrath and 
indignation. 

2. In the beginning of actions of religion, make an act 
of adoration, that is, solemnly worship God, and place thy¬ 
self in God’s presence, and behold him with the eye of faith; 
and let thy desires actually fix on him, as the object of thy 
worship, and the reason of thy hope, and the fountain of 
thy blessing. For when thou hast placed thyself before 
him, and kneelest in his presence, it is most likely, all the 
following parts of thy devotion will be answerable to the 
wisdom of such an apprehension, and the glory of such a 
presence. 

3. Let every thing you see represent to your spirit the 
presence, the excellency, and the power of God; and let 
your conversation with the creatures lead you unto the 
Creator; for so shall your actions be done, more frequently 
with an actual eye to God’s presence, by your often seeing 
him in the glass of the creation. In the face of the sun, 
you may see God’s beauty; in the fire, you may feel his 
heat warming; in the water, his gentleness to refresh you : 
ue it is that comforts your spirits when you have taken 
cordials ; it is the dew of heaven that makes your field give 

* Psalm xiii. 7, 8. 


28 


PRACTICE OF THE 


you bread ; and the breasts of God are the bottles that minis 
ter drink to your necessities. This philosophy, which is ob¬ 
vious to every man’s experience, is a good advantage to our 
piety ; and, by this act of understanding, our wills are check¬ 
ed from violence and misdemeanour. 

4. In your retirement, make frequent colloquies, or short 
discoursings between God and thy own soul. “ Seven 
times a day do I praise thee: and, in the night season also, 
I thought upon thee, while I was waking.” So did David; 
and every act of complaint or thanksgiving, every act of 
rejoicing or of mourning, every petition and every return 
of the heart in these intercourses, is a going to God, and 
appearing in his presence, and a representing him present 
to thy spirit and to thy necessity. And this was, long since 
by a spiritual person, called, “ a building to God a chapel in 
our heart.” It reconciles Martha’s employment with Mary’s 
devotion, charity and religion, the necessities of our calling 
and the employments of devotion. For thus, in the midst 
of the works of your trade, you may retire into your chapel, 
your heart; and converse with God by frequent addresses 
and returns. 

5. Represent and offer to God “ acts of love and fear,” 
which are the proper effects of this apprehension, and the 
proper exercise of this consideration. For, as God is every 
where present by his power, he calls for reverence and 
godly fear : as he is present to thee in all thy needs, and 
relieves them, he deserves thy love : and since, in every 
accident of our lives, we find one or other of these appa¬ 
rent, and, in most things, we see both, it is a proper and pro¬ 
portionate return, that to every such demonstration of God, 
we express ourselves sensible of it, by admiring the Divine 
goodness, or trembling at his presence; ever obeying him, 
because we love him, and ever obeying him, because we 
fear to offend him. This is that, which Enoch did, who 
thus “ walked with God.” 

6. Let us remember, that God is in us, and that we are 
in him: we are his workmanship, let us not deface it; we 
are in his presence, let us not pollute it by unholy and im¬ 
pure actions. God hath “ also wrought all our works in 
us and because he rejoices in his own works, if we defile 
them, and make them unpleasant to him, we walk perversely 
with God, and he will walk crookedly towards us. 

* Isa. xxvi. 12. 


PRESENCE OF GOD. 


29 


7. “God is in the bowels of thy brother;” refresh them, 
when he needs it, and then you give your alms in the pre¬ 
sence of God, and to God; and he feels the relief, which 
thou providest for thy brother, 

8. God is in every place: suppose it therefore to be a 
church: and that decency of deportment and piety of car¬ 
riage, which you are taught, by religion, or by custom, or 
by civility and public manners, to use in churches, the same 
use in all places : with this difference only, that, in churches 
let your deportment be religious in external forms and cir¬ 
cumstances also; but there and every where, let it be reli¬ 
gious in abstaining from spiritual indecencies, and in readi¬ 
ness to do good actions; that it may not be said of us, as 
God once complained of his people, “ Why hath my beloved 
done wickedness in mv house'?”* 

9. God is in every creature; be cruel towards none, nei¬ 
ther abuse any by intemperance. Remember, that the 
creatures, and every member of thy own body, is one of the 
lesser cabinets and receptacles of God. They are such, 
which God hath blessed with his presence, hallowed by his 
touch, and separated from unholy use, by making them to 
belong to his dwelling. 

10. He walks as in the presence of God, that converses 
with him in frequent prayer and frequent communion; that 
runs to him in all his necessities; that asks counsel of him in 
all his doubtings; that opens all his wants to him ; that weeps 
before him for his sins; that asks remedy and support for 
his weakness; that fears him as a judge ; reverences him as 
a lord; obeys him as a father; and loves him as a patron. 

The Benefits of this Exercise. 

The benefits of this consideration and exercise being 
universal upon all the parts of piety, I shall less need to 
specify any particulars: but yet, most properly, this exer¬ 
cise of considering the Divine presence is, 1. An excellent 
help to prayer, producing in us reverence and awfulness to 
the Divine Majesty of God, and actual devotion in our 
offices. 2. It produces a confidence in God, and fearless¬ 
ness of our enemies, patience in trouble, and hope of 
remedy ; since God is so nigh in all our sad accidents, he 
is a disposer of the hearts of men and the events of things, 
he proportions out our trials, and supplies us with remedy, 

* Jer. ix. 15. secun. vulg. edit. 

E 2 


PRACTICE OF THE 


30 

and, where his rod strikes us, his staff supports us. To 
which we may add this: that God, who is always with us, 
is especially, by promise, with us in tribulation, to turn the 
misery into a mercy, and that our greatest trouble may 
become our advantage, by entitling us to a new manner of 
the Divine presence. 3. It is apt to produce joy and re- 
: oicing in God, we being more apt to delight in the partners 
and witnesses of our conversation; every degree of mutual 
abiding and conversing being a relation and an endear¬ 
ment : we are of the same household with God; he is 
with us in our natural actions, to preserve us ; in our re¬ 
creations, to restrain us; in our public actions, to applaud 
or reprove us; in our private, to observe us; in cur sleeps, 
to watch by us; in our watchings, to refresh us: and 
if we walk with God in all his ways, as he walks with 
us in all ours, we shall find perpetual reasons to enable 
us to keep that rule of God, “ Rejoice in the Lord always, 
and again I say rejoice.” And this puts me in mind of 
a saying of an old religious person, “ There is one way of 
overcoming our ghostly enemies; spiritual mirth, and a 
perpetual bearing of God in our minds.” This effectively 
resists the devil, and suffers us to receive no hurt from him. 
4. This exercise is apt also to enkindle holy desires of the 
enjoyment of God, because it produces joy, when we do 
enjoy him; the same desires that a weak man hath for a 
defender; the sick man, for a physician; the poor, for a 
patron; the child, for his father; the espoused lover, for 
her betrothed. 5. From the same fountain are apt to issue 
humility of spirit, apprehensions of our great distance and 
our great needs, our daily wants and hourly supplies, admi¬ 
ration of God’s unspeakable mercies : it is the cause of great 
modesty and decency in our actions; it helps to recollec¬ 
tion of mind, and restrains the scatterings and looseness of 
wandering thoughts; it establishes the heart in good pur¬ 
poses, and leadeth on to perseverance; it gains purity and 
perfection (according to the saying of God to Abraham 
walk before me and be perfect,”) holy fear, and holy love 
and indeed every thing that pertains to holy living: when 
we see ourselves placed in the eye of God, who sets us on 
work, and will reward us plenteously, to serve him with an 
eye-service is very displeasing; for he also sees the heart: 
and the want of this consideration was declared to be the 
cause why Israel sinned so grievously, “ for they say, The 


PRESENCE OF GOD. 


31 

Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not 
u therefore the land is full of blood, and the city full of per¬ 
verseness.What a child would do, in the eye of his 

father; and a pupil, before his tutor ; and a wife, in the 

presence of her husband; and a servant, in the sight of 
his master; let us always do the same ; for we are made a 

spectable to God, to angels, and to men ; we are always 

in the sight and presence of the all-seeing and almighty 
God, who also is to us a father and a guardian, a husband 
and a lord. 

Prayers and Devotions , according to the religion and 
purposes of the foregoing considerations. 

I .—For grace to spend our time well. 

O eternal God, who, from all eternity, dost behold and 
love thy own glories and perfections infinite, and hast cre¬ 
ated me to do the work of God after the manner of men, 
and to serve thee in this generation, and according to my 
capacities; give me thy grace, that I may be a curious and 
prudent spender of my time, so as I may best prevent, or 
resist, all temptation, and be profitable to the Christian 
commonwealth, and, by discharging all my duty, may glo¬ 
rify thy name. Take from me all slothfulness, and give 
me a diligent and an active spirit, and wisdom to choose 
my employment: that I may do works proportionable to 
my person, and to the dignity of a Christian, and may fill 
up all the spaces of my time with actions of religion and 
charity ; that, when the devil assaults me, he may not find 
me idle ; and my dearest Lord, at his sudden coming, may 
find me busy in lawful, necessary, and pious actions ; im¬ 
proving my talent entrusted to me by thee, my Lord; that 
I may enter into the joy of my Lord, to partake of his eter¬ 
nal felicities, even for thy mercy’s sake, and for my dearest 
Saviour’s sake. Amen. 

Here follows the devotion of ordinary days ; for the right 
employment of those portions of time, which every day 
must allow for religion. 

The first prayers in the morning as soon as we are dressed. 

Humbly and reverently compose yourself, with heart lift-up 
to God, and your head bowed, and meekly kneeling 
upon your knees, say the Lord’s prayer: after which, 

* Psalm x. 11. t Ezek. ix. 9. 


32 


DEVOTIONS FOR 


use the following collects, or as many of them as you 
shall choose. 

“ Our Father, which art in heaven,” &c. 

I. —An Act of Adoration , being the song that the angels 

sing in heaven . 

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and 
is, and is to come :* heaven and earth, angels and men, the 
air and the sea, give glory and honour, and thanks to him, 
that sitteth on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever.f 
All the blessed spirits and souls of the righteous cast their 
crowns before the throne, and worship him that liveth for 
ever and ever.ij: Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive 
glory, and honour and power: for thou hast created all 
things, and for thy pleasure they are, and were created. 
Great and marvellous are thy works, O Lord God Almighty : 
just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.§ Thy 
wisdom is infinite, thy mercies are glorious; and I am not 
worthy, O Lord, to appear in thy presence, before whom 
the angels hide their faces. O holy and eternal Jesus, 
Lamb of God, who wert slain from the beginning of the 
world, thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of 
every nation, and hast made us unto our God kings and 
priests, and we shall reign with thee for ever. Blessing, 
honour, glory, and power be unto him, that sitteth on the 
throne, and to the Lamb, for ever. Amen. 

II. — An Act of Thanksgiving , being the song of David , 

for the morning. 

Sing praises unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give 
thanks to him for a remembrance of his holiness. For his 
wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye : and in his 
pleasure is life; heaviness may endure for a night; but joy 
cometh in the morning. Thou, Lord, hast preserved me 
this night from the violence of the spirits of darkness, from 
all sad casualties and evil accidents, from the wrath, which 
I have every day deserved ; thou hast brought my soul out 
of hell; thou hast kept my life from them that go down 
into the pit: thou hast showed me marvellous great kind¬ 
ness, and hast blessed me for ever; the greatness of thy 
glory reacheth unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the 
clouds. Therefore shall every good man sing of thy praise 

* Rcr xi. 17. t Rev. v. 10. 13. t Rev. iv. 10. $ Rev. xv. 3 


ORDINARY DAYS 


33 

without ceasing. O my God, I will give thanks unto thee 
for ever. Hallelujah. 

HI.— An Act of Oblation , or presenting ourselves to 

God for the day. 

Most holy and eternal God, Lord and Sovereign of all the 
creatures, I humbly present to thy Divine majesty, myself, 
my soul and body, my thoughts and my words, my actions 
and intentions, my passions and my sufferings, to be dis¬ 
posed by thee to thy glory ; to be blessed by thy provi¬ 
dence ; to be guided by thy council; to be sanctified by 
thy Spirit; and, afterward, that my body and soul may 
be received into glory: for nothing can perish, which is 
under thy custody ; and the enemy of souls cannot de¬ 
vour what is thy portion, nor take it out of thy hands. 
This day, O Lord, and all the days of my life, I dedicate 
to thy honour, and the actions of my calling, to the uses 
of grace, and the religion of all my days, to be united to 
the merits and intercession of my holy Saviour, Jesus ,* 
that, in him and for him, I may be pardoned and accepted. 
Amen. 

IV.— An Act of Repentance or Contrition. 

For, as for me, I am not worthy to be called thy servant; 
much less am I worthy to be thy son : for I am the vilest 
of sinners and the worst of men : a lover of the thino-s of 

O 

the world, and a despiser of the things of God; proud and 
envious, lustful and intemperate, greedy of sin, and impa¬ 
tient of reproof; desirous to seem holy, and negligent of 
being so ; transported with interest; fooled with presump¬ 
tion and false principles; disturbed with anger, with a 
peevish and unmortified spirit, and disordered by a whole 
body of sin and death. Lord, pardon all my sins for my 
sweetest Saviour’s sake: thou, who didst die for me, holy 
Jesus, save me and deliver me : reserve not my sins to be 
punished in the day of wrath and eternal vengeance ; but 
wash away my sins, and blot them out of thy remem¬ 
brance, and purify my soul with the waters of repentance, 
and the blood of the cross ; that, for what is past, thy wrath 
may not come out against me ; and, for the time to come, 
I may never provoke thee to anger or to jealousy. O just 
and dear God, be pitiful and gracious to thy servant. Amen. 

V. — The Prayer , or Petition. 

Bless me, gracious God, in my calling to such purposes, 


34 


DEVOTIONS FOR 


as thou shalt choose for me, or employ me in : relieve me 
in all my sadnesses ; make my bed in my sickness ; give 
me patience in my sorrows, confidence in thee, and grace 
to call upon thee in all temptations. O be thou rny guide 
in all my actions ; my protector in all dangers; give me a 
healthful body, and a clear understanding; a sanctified 
and just, a charitable and humble, a religious and a con¬ 
tented spirit; let not my life be miserable and wretched; 
nor my name stained with sin and shame ; nor my condi¬ 
tion lifted up to a tempting and dangerous fortune : but let 
my condition be blessed, my conversation useful to my 
neighbours, and pleasing to thee; that, when my body 
shall lie down in its bed of darkness, my soul may pass into 
the regions of light, and live with thee for ever, through 
Jesus Christ. Amen. 

VI.— An Act of Intercession or Prayer for others, to he added 
to this or any other office, as our devotion, or duty,*or their 
needs, shall determine us. 

O God of infinite mercy, who hast compassion on all 
men, and relievest the necessities of all that call to thee 
for help, hear the prayers of thy servant, who is unworthy 
o ask any petition for himself, yet, in humility and duty, 
s bound to pray for others. 

For the Church. 

O let thy mercy descend upon the whole church ; pre¬ 
serve her in truth and peace, in unity and safety, in all 
storms, and against all temptations and enemies ; that she, 
offering to thy glory the never-ceasing sacrifice of urayer 
and thanksgiving, may advance the honour of her Lord, 
and be filled with his Spirit, and partake of his glory. 
Amen. 

For the King. 

In mercy, remember the king; preserve his person, in 
health and honour ; his crown, in wealth and dignity ; his 
kingdoms, in peace and plenty; the churches under his 
protection, in piety and knowledge, and a strict and holy 
religion: keep him perpetually in thy fear and favour, and 
crown him with glory and immortality. Amen. 

For the Clergy. 

Remember them, that minister about holy things; let 
them be clothed with righteousness, and sing with joyful¬ 
ness. Amen. 


ORDINARY DAYS. 


35 


For Wife or Husband. 

Bless thy servant [my wife, or husband] with health of 
body and of spirit. O let the hand of thy blessing be upon 
his [or lier\ head, night and day, and support him in all ne¬ 
cessities, strengthen him in all temptations, comfort him in 
all his sorrows, and let him be thy servant in. all changes ; 
and make us both to dwell with thee for ever in thv favour, 
in the light of thy countenance, and in thy glory. Amen. 

For our Children. 

Bless my children with healthful bodies, with good un¬ 
derstandings, with the graces and gifts of thy Spirit, with 
sweet dispositions and holy habits; and sanctify them 
throughout in their bodies, and souls, and spirits, and keep 
them unblamable to the coming of the Lord Jesus. Amen. 

For Friends and Benefactors. 

Be pleased, O Lord, to remember my friends, all that 
have prayed for me, and all that have done me good. 
[Here name such , whom you would especially recommend .] 
Do thou good to them, and return all their kindness double 
into their own bosom, rewarding them with blessings, and 
sanctifying them with thy graces, and bringing them to 
glory. 

For our Family. 

Let all my family and kindred, my neighbours and ac¬ 
quaintance [ here name what other relations you please ], re¬ 
ceive the benefit of my prayers, and the blessings of God; 
the comforts and supports of thy providence, and the sanc¬ 
tification of thy Spirit. 

For all in Misery. 

Relieve and comfort all the persecuted and afflicted ; 
speak peace to troubled consciences : strengthen the weak : 
confirm the strong: instruct the ignorant: deliver the op¬ 
pressed from him that spmleth him, and relieve the needy 
that hath no helper; and bring us all, by the waters of com¬ 
fort, and in the ways of righteousness, to the kingdom of 
rest and glory, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 

To God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: to the 
eternal Son, that was incarnate and born of a Virgin ; to 
the Spirit of the Father and the Son, be all honour and 
glory, worship and thanksgiving, now and for ever. Amen. 


36 


DEVOTIONS FOR 


Another Form of Prayer, for the Morning. 

' In the name of the Father , and of the Son , and of the Holy 

Ghost. Our Father , <fyc. 

I. 

Most glorious and eternal God. father of mercy, and 
God of all comfort, I worship and adore thee with the lowest 
humility of my soul and body, and give thee all thanks and 
praise for thy infinite and essential glories and perfections, 
and for the continual demonstration of thy mercies upon 
me, upon all mine, and upon thy holy catholic chu;ch. 

II. 

I acknowledge, dear God, that I have deserved the 
greatest of thy wrath and indignation ; and that, if thou 
hadst dealt with me according to my deserving, I had now, 
at this instant, been desperately bewailing my miseries, in •> 
the sorrows and horrors of a sad eternity. But, thy mercy 
triumphing over thy justice and my sins, thou hast still 
continued to me life and time of repentance ; thou hast 
opened to me the gates of grace and mercy, and perpetu¬ 
ally callest upon me to enter in, and to walk in the paths 
of a holy life, that I might glorify thee, and be glorified of 
thee eternally. 

III. 

Behold, O God, for this thy great and unspeakable good 
ness, for the preservation of me this night, and for all 
other thy graces and blessings, I offer up my soul and 
body, all that I am, and all that I have, as a sacrifice to 
thee and thy service ; humbly begging of thee to pardon 
all my sins, to defend me from all evil, to lead me into all 
good ; and let my portion be amongst thy redeemed ones, 
in the gathering together of the saints, in the kingdom of 
grace and glory. 

IV. 

Guide me, O Lord, in all the changes and varieties of 
the world; that in all things that shall happen, I may 
have an evenness and tranquillity of spirit; that my soul 
may be wholly resigned to thy divinest will and pleasure, 
never murmuring at thy gentle chastisements and fatherly 
correction; never waxing proud and insolent, though I feel 
a torrent of comforts and prosperous successes. 


ORDINARY DAYS. 


37 


V. 

Fix my thoughts, my hopes, and my desires, upon 
heaven, and heavenly things; teach me to despise the 
world, to repent me deeply for my sins; give me holy pur¬ 
poses of amendment, and ghostly strength and assistances 
to perform faithfully, whatsoever I shall intend piously. 
Enrich my understanding with an eternal treasure of 
divine truths, that I may know thy will; and thou, who 
workest in us to will and to do of thy good pleasure, 
teach me to obey all thy commandments, to believe all thy 
revelations, and make me partaker of all thy gracious pro¬ 
mises. 

VI. 

Teach me to watch over all my ways, that I may never 
be surprised by sudden temptations or a careless spirit, 
nor ever return to folly and vanity. Set a watch, O Lord, 
before my mouth, and keep the door of my lips, that I 
offend not in my tongue, neither against piety nor charity. 
Teach me to think of nothing but thee, and what is in 
order to thy glory and service : to speak nothing but 
thee, and thy glories ; and to do nothing, but what be¬ 
comes thy servant, whom thy infinite mercy, by the graces 
of thy Holy Spirit, hath sealed up to the day of redemp¬ 
tion. 

VII. 

Let all my passions and affections be so mortified and 
brought under the dominion of grace, that I may never, 
by deliberation and purpose, nor yet by levity, rashness, 
or inconsideration, offend thy Divine majesty. Make me 
such as thou wouldst have me to be: strengthen my 
faith, confirm my hope, and give me a daily increase of 
charity, that, this day and ever, I may serve thee accord¬ 
ing to all my opportunities and capacities, growing from 
grace to grace; till at last, by thy mercies, I shall receive 
the consummation and perfection of grace, even the glories 
of thy kingdom, in the full fruition of the face and excel¬ 
lences of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; 
to whom be glory and praise, honour and adoration, given 
by all angels, and all men, and all creatures, now, and to all 
eternity. Amen. 

IT To this ’may be added the prayer of intercession for 
others, whom we are bound to remember, which is at 
the end of the foregoing prayer; or else you may take 
F 


88 


DEVOTIONS FOR 


such special prayers, which follow at the end of tho 
fourth chapter [for parents, for children, &c.] 

After this, conclude with this ejaculution. 

Now, in all tribulation and anguish of spirit, in all 
dangers of soul and body, in prosperity and adversity, in 
the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, holy and 
most blessed Saviour Jesus, have mercy upon me, save me, 
and deliver me and all faithful people. Amen. 

IT Between this and noon, usually, are said the public 
prayers appointed by authority; to which all the clergy 
are obliged, and other devout persons, that have leisure, 
to accompany them. 

IT Afternoon, or at any time of the day, when a devout 
person retires into his closet for private prayer, or spirit¬ 
ual exercises, he may say the following devotions. 

An exercise to he used at any time of the day. 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, &c. Our 
Father, &c. 

The Hymn, collected out of the Psalms, recounting the 
excellences and greatness of God. 

O be joyful in God, all ye lands ; sing praises unto the 
honour of his name, make his name to be'glorious. O come 
hither, and behold the works of God, how wonderful he is 
in his doings towards the children of men. He ruleth 
with his power for ever.* 

He is the Father of the fatherless, and defendeth the 
cause of the widow, even God in his holy habitation. He 
is the God, that maketh men to be of one mind in a house, 
and bringeth the prisoners out of captivity ; but letteth the 
runagates continue in scarceness.f 

It is the Lord, that commandeth the waters; it is the 
glorious God, that maketh the thunder. It is the Lord 
that ruleth the sea: the voice of the Lord is mighty in ope¬ 
ration ; the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice.lj: 

Let all the earth fear the Lord : stand in awe of him, all 
ve, that dwell in the world.§ Thou shalt show us wonder¬ 
ful things in thy righteousness, O God of our salvation ; 
thou, that art the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of 
them, that remain in the broad sea.j) 

Glory be to the Father, &c. 

* Psalm lxvi. 1. 4. 6. t Psalm lxviii. 5, 6. t Psalm xxix. 3, 4. 

$ Psalm xxxiii. 8. j| Psalm xv 5. 


ORDINARY DAYS 


39 


Or, this : 

O Lord, thou art my God, I will exalt thee : I will praise 
thy name, for thou hast done wonderful things: thy coun¬ 
sels of old are faithfulness and truth.* 

Thou, in thy strength, settest fast the mountains, and 
are girded about with power. Thou stillest the raging of 
the sea, and the noise of his waves, and the madness of his 
people.f 

They also that remain in the uttermost parts of the 
earth, shall be afraid at thy tokens; thou, that makest the 
outgoings of the morning and evening to praise thee. 

O Lord God of Hosts, who is like unto thee ? thy truth, 
most mighty Lord, is on every side4 Among the gods 
there is none like unto thee : O Lord, there is none, that 
can do, as thou doest. For thou art great, and doest won¬ 
drous things ; thou art God alone.§ 

God is very greatly to be feared in the council of the 
saints, and to be had in reverence of all them, that are 
round about him.|| 

Righteousness and equity is in the habitation of thy 
seat; mercy and truth shall go before thy face. Glory and 
worship are before him; power and honour are in his sanc- 
tuary.1T 

Thou, Lord, art the thing, that I long for; thou art my 
hope, even from my youth. Through thee have I been 
holden up, ever since I was born; thou art he, that took 
me out of my mother’s womb; my praise shall be always 
of thee.** 

Glory be to the Father, &c. 

IT After this may be read some portion of Holy Scripture, 
out of the New Testament, or out of the Sapiential books 
of the Old, viz. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, &c. because these 
are of great use to piety, and to civil conversation. Upon 
which, when you have awhile meditated, humbly compos¬ 
ing yourself upon your knees, say as followeth. 

Ejaculations. 

My help standeth in the name of the Lord, who hath 
made heaven and earth.f'f' 

Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant; 
and I shall be safe.^ 

* Isa. xxv. 1. t Psalm Ixv. 6—8. t Psalm lxxxix. 9. 

$ Psalm lxxxvi. 8, 9. II Psalm lxxxix. 8. 15. IT Psalm xcvi. 6. 

** Psalm lxxi 5, 6- ft Psalm cxxiv. 8. it Psalm lxxx. 3. 


40 


DEVOTIONS FOR 


Do well, O Lord, to them that be true of heart, and ever 
more mightily defend them.* 

Direct me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art my 
Saviour and my great master, f 

Keep me from sin and death eternal, and from my ene- 
mies visible and invisible. 

Give me grace to live a holy life, and thy favour, that I 
may die a godly and happy death. 

Lord, hear the prayer of thy servant, and give me thy 
Holy Spirit. 

The Prayer. 

O eternal God, merciful and gracious, vouchsafe thy 
favour and thy blessing to thy servant: let the love of thy 
mercies, and the dread and fear of thy majesty, make me 
careful and inquisitive to search thy will, and diligent to 
perform it, and to persevere in the practices of a holy life, 
even till the last of my days. 

II. 

Keep me, O Lord, for I am thine by creation ; guide 
me, for I am thine by purchase ,* thou hast redeemed me 
by the blood of thy Son ; and loved me with the love of 
a father, for I am thy child by adoption and grace : let 
thy mercy pardon my sins, thy providence secure me from 
the punishments and evils I have deserved, and thy care 
watch over me, that I may never any more offend thee : 
make me, in malice, to be a child ; but in understanding, 
piety, and the fear of God, let me be a perfect man in 
Christ, innocent and prudent, readily furnished and in¬ 
structed to every good work. 

III. 

Keep me, O Lord, from the destroying angel, and from 
the wrath of God; let thy anger never rise against me, 
but thy rod gently correct my follies, and guide me in thy 
ways, and thy staff support me in all sufferings and 
changes. Preserve me from fracture of bones, from noi¬ 
some, infectious, and sharp sicknesses; from great vio¬ 
lences of fortune and sudden surprises : keep all my senses 
entire till the day of my death, and let my death be nei¬ 
ther sudden, untimely, nor unprovided: let it be after the 
common manner of men. having in it nothing extraordi- 

* Psalm cxxv 4. t Psalm xxv. 5. 


ORDINARY DAYS. 


41 

nary, but an extraordinary piety, and the manifestation of 
thy great and miraculous mercy 

IV. 

Let no riches make me ever forget myself, no poverty 
ever make me to forget thee : let no hope or fear, no pleasure 
or pain, no accident without, no weakness within, hinder 
or discompose my duty, or turn me from the ways of thy 
commandments. O let thy Spirit dwell with me for ever, 
and make my soul just and charitable, full of honesty, full 
of religion, resolute and constant in holy purposes, but in¬ 
flexible to evil. Make me humble and obedient, peace¬ 
able and pious : let me never envy any man’s good, nor 
deserve to be despised myself; and if I be, teach me to 
bear it with meekness and charity. 

V. 

Give me a tender conscience; a conversation discreet 
and affable, modest and patient, liberal and obliging; a 
body chaste and healthful, competency of living according 
to my condition, contentedness in all estates, a resigned 
will and mortified affections; that I may be, as thou 
wouldst have me, and my portion may be in the lot of the 
righteous, in the brightness of thy countenance, and the 
glories of eternity. Amen. 

Holy is our God. Holy is the Almighty. Holy is the 
Immortal. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, have 
mercy upon me. 

A Form of Prayer for the Evening, to he said by such, ivho 
have not time or opportunity to say the public prayers 
appointed for this office. 

I. 

Evening Prayer. 

O eternal God, great Father of men and angels, who 
hast established the heavens and the earth in a wonder¬ 
ful order, making day and night to succeed each other; 
I make my humble address to thy Divine Majesty, begging 
of thee mercy and protection this night and ever. O Lord, 
pardon all my sins, my light and rash words, the vanity and 
impiety of my thoughts, my unjust and uncharitable ac¬ 
tions, and whatsoever I have transgressed against thee this 
day, or at any time before. Behold, O God, my soul 
is troubled in the remembrance of my sins, in the frailty 
f 2 


DEVOTIONS FOR 


42 

and sinfulness of my flesh exposed to every temptation 
and of itself not able to resist any. Lord God of mercy, 

I earnestly beg of thee to give a great portion of thy grace, 
such as may be sufficient and effectual for the mortification 
of all my sins and vanities and disorders: that as I have 
formerly served my lust and unworthy desires, so now I may 
give myself up wholly to thy service and the studies of a 
holy life. 

II. 

Blessed Lord, teach me frequently and sadly to remem¬ 
ber my sins; and be thou pleased to remember them no 
more : let me never forget thy mercies, and do thou still 
remember to do me good. Teach me to walk always as 
in thy presence: ennoble my soul with great degrees of 
love to thee, and consign my spirit with great fear, religion, 
and veneration of thy holy name and laws; that it may 
become the great employment of my whole life to serve 
thee, to advance thy glory, to root out all the accursed 
habits of sin; that in holiness of life, in humility, in cha¬ 
rity, in chastity, and all the ornaments of grace, I may, by 
patience, wait for the coming of our Lord Jesus. Amen. 

m. 

Teach me, O Lord, to number my days, that I may apply 
my heart unto wisdom; ever to remember my last end, 
that I may not dare to sin against thee. Let thy holy angels 
be ever present with me to keep me in all my ways from the 
malice and violence of the spirits of darkness, from evil 
company, and the occasions and opportunities of evil, from 
perishing in popular judgments, from all the ways of sinful 
shame, from the hands of all mine enemies, from a sinful life, 
and from despair in the day of my death. Then, O bright¬ 
est Jesu, shine gloriously upon me; let thy mercies and 
the light of thy countenance sustain me in all my agonies, 
weaknesses, and temptations. Give me opportunity of a 
prudent and spiritual guide; and of receiving the holy sa¬ 
crament, and let thy loving Spirit so guide me in the ways 
of peace and safety, that with the testimony of a good con¬ 
science and the sense of thy mercies and refreshment, I 
may depart this life in the unity of the church, in the love 
of God, and a certain hope of salvation, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord and most blessed Saviour. Amen. 

Our Father, &c. 


ORDINARY DAYS. 


4? 

Another Form of Evening Prayer , which may also he used 

at Bed-time . 

Our Father, &c. 

I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh 
my help.* 

My help cometh of the Lord, which made heaven and 
earth. 

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : he that keepeth 
thee will not slumber. 

Behold, he that keepeth Israel, shall neither slumber nor 
sleep. 

The Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy shade, upon thy 
right hand. 

The sun shall not smite thee by day, neither the moon by 
night. 

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; he shall pre¬ 
serve thy soul. 

The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, 
from this time forth for evermore. 

Glory be to the Father, &c. 

I. 

Visit, I beseech thee, O Lord, this habitation with thy 
mercy, and me with thy grace and salvation. Let thy 
holy angels pitch their tents round about and dwell here, 
that no illusion of the night may abuse me, the spirits of 
darkness may not come near to hurt me, no evil or sad 
accident oppress me; and let the eternal Spirit of the 
Father dwell in my soul and body, filling every corner of 
my heart with light and grace. Let no deed of darkness 
overtake me; and let thy blessing, most blessed God, be 
upon me for ever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

II. 

Into thy hands, most blessed Jesu, I commend my soul 
and body, for thou hast redeemed both with thy most 
precious blood. So bless and sanctify my sleep unto me, 
that it may be temperate, holy, and safe, a refreshment 
to my wearied body, to enable it so to serve my soul, that 
both may serve thee with a never-failing duty. O let me 
never sleep in sin, or death eternal, but give me a watchfu 
and a prudent spirit, that I may omit no opportunity of 
serving thee; that whether I sleep or wake, live or die, 

* Psalm cxxi. 1, &c. 


44 


DEVOTIONS FOR 


l may be thy servant and thy child: that when the work 
of my life is done, I may rest in the bosom of my Lord, tiL 
by the voice of the archangel, the trump of God, I shall 
be awakened, and called to sit down and feast in the eternal 
supper of the Lamb. Grant this, O Lamb of God, for the 
honour of thy mercies, and the glory of thy name, O most 
merciful Saviour and Redeemer Jesus. Amen. 

III. 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who 
hath sent his angels, and kept me this day from the de¬ 
struction that walketh at noon, and the arrow that flieth 
by day; and hath given me his Spirit to restrain me from 
those evils, to which my own weaknesses, and my evil 
habits, and my unquiet enemies, would easily betray me. 
Blessed and for ever hallowed be thy name, for that never- 
ceasing shower of blessing, by which I live, and am con¬ 
tent and blessed, and provided for in all necessities, and 
set forward in my duty and way to heaven. Blessing, ho¬ 
nour, glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth on the 
throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever. Amen. 

Holy is our God. Holy is the Almighty. Holy is the 
Immortal. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, have 
mercy upon me. 

Ejaculations and short Meditations to he used in the Night , 

when we wake. 

Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own 
heart upon your bed, and be still. I will lay me down in 
peace and sleep; for thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell 
in safety.* 

O Father of spirits, and the God of all flesh, have 
mercy and pity upon all sick and dying Christians, and 
receive the souls which thou hast redeemed returning 
unto thee. 

Blessed are they that dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem, 
where there is no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to 
shine in it: for the glory of God does lighten it, and the 
Lamb is the light thereof.f And there shall be no night 
there, and they need no candle; for the Lord God giveth 
them light, and they shall reign for ever and ever.:}: 

Meditate on Jacob’s wrestling with the angel all night: 

* Psalm iv 4. 9 t Rev xxi. 23. f Rev. xxii. 5. 


ORDINARY DAYS. 


45 

be thou also importunate with God for a blessing, and give 
not over, till he hath blessed thee. 

Meditate on the angel passing over the children of Israe., 
and destroying the Egyptians for disobedience and oppres¬ 
sion. Pray for the grace of obedience and charity, and for 
the divine protection. 

Meditate on the angel, who destroyed in a night the 
tvhole army of the Assyrians for fornication. Call to mind 
the sins of thy youth, the sins of thy bed; and say with 
David, “ My reins chasten me in the night season, and my 
soul refuseth comfort.” Pray for pardon and the grace of 
chastity. 

Meditate on the agonies of Christ in the garden, his sad¬ 
ness and affliction all that night; and thank and adore him 
for his love, that made him suffer so much for thee; and hate 
thy sins, which made it necessary for the Son of God to suf¬ 
fer so much. 

Meditate on the four last things. 1. The certainty of 
death. 2. The terrors of the day of judgment. 3. The 
joys of heaven. 4. The pains of hell; and the eternity of 
both. 

Think upon all thy friends, who are gone before thee; 
and pray that God would grant to thee to meet them in a 
joyful resurrection. 

“ The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night ;* 
in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, 
and the elements shall melt with a fervent heat; the earth 
also, and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up. 
Seeing then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what 
manner of persons ought we to be, in all holy conversation 
and godliness, looking for and hastening unto the coming 
of the day of God?” 

Lord, in mercy remember thy servant in the day of judg¬ 
ment. 

Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord, my God. In thee, 
O Lord, have I trusted: let me never be confounded. 
Amen. 

I desire the Christian reader to observe, that all these 
offices or forms of prayer (if they should be used every 
day) would not spend above an hour and a half: but be¬ 
cause some of them are double (and so but one of them to 
be used in one day) it is much less: and by affording to 

* 2 Pet. iii. 10. 


46 


DEVOTIONS FOR ORDINARY DAYS. 


God one hour in twenty-four, thou mayest have the comforts 
and rewards of devotion. But he that thinks this is too 
much, either is very busy in the world, or very careless of 
heaven. However, I have parted the prayers into small 
portions, that he may use which and how many he please 
in any one of the forms. 

Ad Sect. 2. 

A Prayer for holy intention in the beginning and 'pursuit of 
any considerable action , as Study , Preaching , Spc. 

O eternal God, who hast made all things for man, and 
man for thy glory, sanctify my body and soul, my thoughts 
and my intentions, my words and actions, that whatsoever 
I shall think, or speak, or do, may be by me designed to 
the glorification of thy name ; and by thy blessing it may 
be effective and successful in the work of God, according 
as it can be capable. Lord turn my necessities into 
virtue; the works of nature into the works of grace, by 
making them orderly, regular, temperate, subordinate, and 
profitable to ends beyond their own proper efficacy : and 
let no pride or self-seeking, no covetousness or revenge, 
no impure mixture or unhandsome purposes, no little 
ends and low imaginations, pollute my spirit, and un¬ 
hallow any of my words and actions: but let my body be 
a servant of my spirit, and both body and spirit servants of 
Jesus ; that doing all things for thy glory here, I may be 
partaker of thy glory hereafter; through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. Amen. 

Ad Sect. 3. 

A Prayer meditating and referring to the Divine presence . 

IT This Prayer is specially to be used in temptation to 

private sins. 

O Almighty God, infinite and eternal, thou fillest ail 
things with thy presence ; thou art every where by thy 
essence and by thy power, in heaven by glory, in holy 
places by thy grace and favour, in the hearts of thy 
servants by thy Spirit, in the consciences of all men by 
thy testimony and observation of us. Teach me to walk 
always as in thy presence, to fear thy majesty, to reve¬ 
rence thy wisdom and omniscience ; that I may never dare 
to commit any indecency in the eye of my Lord and my 
Judge ; but that I may, with so much care and reverence, 
demean myself, that my Judge may not be my accuser, 


CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY. 


47 


but my advocate ; that I. expressing the belief of thy pre¬ 
sence here by careful walking, may feel the effects of it in 
the participation of eternal glory, through Jesus Christ. 
Amen. 


CHAPTER II. 

OF CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY. 

SECTION I. 

Of Sobriety in the gtneral sense. 

Christian religion, in all its moral parts, is nothing else 
but the law of nature, and great reason, complying with 
the great necessities of all the world, and promoting the 
great profit of all relations, and carrying us through all 
accidents of variety of chances to that end, which God 
hath from eternal ages purposed for all that live according 
to it, and which he hath revealed in Jesus Christ: and, 
according to the apostle’s arithmetic, hath but these three 
parts of it; 1. Sobriety, 2. Justice, 3. Religion. “Foi 
the grace of God bringing salvation hath appeared to all 
men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly 
lusts, we should live, 1. Soberly, 2. Righteously, and, 
3. Godly, in this present world, looking for that blessed 
hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our 
Saviour Jesus Christ.” The first contains all our deport¬ 
ment in our personal and private capacities, the fair treat¬ 
ing of our bodies and our spirits. The second enlarges 
our duty in all relations to our neighbour. The third con¬ 
tains the offices of direct religion, and intercourse with 
God. 

Christian sobriety is all that duty, that concerns our¬ 
selves in the matter of meat, and drink, and pleasures, 
and thoughts ; and it hath within it the duties of 1. Tem¬ 
perance, 2. Chastity, 3. Humility, 4. Modesty, 5. Content. 

It is a using severity, denial and frustration of our appe¬ 
tite, when it grows unreasonable in any of these instances: 
the necessity of which we shall to best purpose understand, 
by considering the evil consequences of sensuality, effemi¬ 
nacy, or fondness after carnal pleasures. 

Evil consequences of Voluptuousness or Sensuality . 

1. A longing after sensual pleasures is a dissolution of 
the spirit of a man, and makes it loose, soft, and wander- 


CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY. 


48 

ing; unapt for noble, wise, or spiritual employments; be¬ 
cause the principles, upon which pleasure is chosen and 
pursued, are sottish, weak, and unlearned, such as prefer 
the body before the soul, the appetite before reason, sense 
Defore the spirit, the pleasures of a short abode before the 
pleasures of eternity. 

2. The nature of sensual pleasure is vain, empty, and 
unsatisfying, biggest always in expectation, and a mere 
vanity in the enjoying, and leaves a sting and thorn be¬ 
hind it, when it goes off.* Our laughing, if it be loud and 
high, commonly ends in a deep sigh: and all the instances 
of pleasure have a sting in the tail, though they carry 
beauty on the face and sweetness on the lip. 

3. Sensual pleasure is a great abuse to the spirit of a 
man, being a kind of fascination or witchcraft, blinding 
the understanding and enslaving the will. And he that 
knows he is free-born or redeemed with the blood of the 
Son of God, will not easily suffer the freedom of his soul to 
be entangled and rifled. 

4. It is most contrary to the state of a Christian, whose 
life is a perpetual exercise, a wrestling and warfare, to 
which sensual pleasure disables him, by yielding to that 
enemy, with whom he must strive, if ever he will be 
crowned. And this argument the apostle intimated : “ He 
that striveth for masteries is temperate in all things : now 
they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incor¬ 
ruptible.”* 

5. It is by a certain consequence the greatest impedi¬ 
ment in the world to martyrdom ; that being a fondness, 
this being a cruelty to the flesh; to which a Christian 
man, arriving by degrees, must first have crucified the 
lesser affections: for he, that is overcome by little argu¬ 
ments of pain, will hardly consent to lose his life with tor¬ 
ments. 

Degrees of Sobriety. 

Against this voluptuousness, sobriety is opposed in three 
degrees. 

1. A despite or disaffection to pleasures, or a resolving 
against all entertainment of the instances and temptations 
of sensuality; and it consists in the internal faculties of 
will and understanding, decreeing and declaring against 


* 1 Cor. ix. 25. 


CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY 


4b 

them, disapproving and disliking them, upon good reason 
and strong resolution. 

2. A fight and actual war against all the temptations 
and offers of sensual pleasure in all evil instances and de¬ 
grees : and it consists in prayer, in fasting, in cheap diet, 
and hard lodging, and laborious exercises, and avoiding 
occasions, and using all arts and industry of fortifying the 
spirit, and making it severe, manly, and Christian. 

3. Spiritual pleasure is the highest degree of sobriety; 
and in the same degree, in which we relish and are in love 
with spiritual delights, the hidden manna,* with the sweet¬ 
nesses of devotion, with the joys of thanksgiving, with re¬ 
joicings in the Lord, with the comforts of hope, with the 
deliciousness of charity and alms-deeds, with the sweet¬ 
ness of a good conscience, with the peace of meekness, and 
the felicities of a contented spirit; in the same degree we 
disrelish and loathe the husks of swinish lusts, and the 
parings of the apples of Sodom, and the taste of sinful 
pleasures is unsavoury as the drunkard’s vomit. 

Rules for suppressing Voluptuousness. 

The precepts and advices, which are of best and of ge¬ 
neral use in the curing of sensuality, are these : 

1. Accustom thyself to cut off all superfluity in the pro¬ 
visions of thy life, for our desires will enlarge beyond the 
present possession, so long as all the things of this world 
are unsatisfying ; if therefore you suffer them to extend 
beyond the measures of necessity or moderated conveni- 
ency, they will still swell; but you reduce them to a little 
compass, when you make nature to be your limit. We 
must take more care, that our desires should cease, than 
that they should be satisfied: and therefore reducing them 
to narrow scantlings and small proportions is the best in¬ 
strument to redeem their trouble, and prevent the dropsy, 
because that is next to a universal denying them; it is 
certainly a paring off from them all unreasonableness and 
irregularity. “For whatsoever covets unseemly things, 
and is apt to swell to an inconvenient bulk, is to to be chas¬ 
tened and tempered ; and such are sensuality, and a boy,” 
said the philosopher. 

2. Suppress your sensual desires in their first approach; 
for then they are least, and thy faculties and election are 

_ * Apoc. ii. 17 

G 


50 


CHRISTIAN SOBRIETY. 


stronger; but if they, in their weakness, prevail upon thy 
strengths, there will be no resisting them when they are in¬ 
creased, and thy abilities lessened. “ You shall scarce ob¬ 
tain of them to end, if you suffer them to begin.” 

3. Divert them with some laudable employment, and 
take off their edge by inadvertency, or a not-attending to 
them. For since the faculties of a man cannot at the same 
time, with any sharpness, attend to two objects, if you em¬ 
ploy your spirit upon a book or a bodily labour, or any in¬ 
nocent and indifferent employment, you have no room left 
for the present trouble of a sensual temptation. For to 
this sense it was, that Alexander told the Queen of Caria, 
that his tutor Leonidas had provided two cooks for him; 
“ Hard marches all night, and a small dinner the next day 
these tamed his youthful aptnesses to dissolution, so long as 
he ate of their provisions. 

4. Look upon pleasures, not upon that side that is next 
the sun, or where they look beauteously; that is, as they 
come towards you to be enjoyed, for then they paint, and 
smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel and glass gems, 
and counterfeit imagery ; but when thou hast rifled and 
discomposed them with enjoying their false beauties, and 
that they begin to go off, then behold them in their naked¬ 
ness and weariness. See, what a sigh and sorrow, what 
naked unhandsome proportions, and a filthy carcass, they 
discover ; and the next time they counterfeit, remember 
what you have already discovered, and be no more abused. 
And I have known some wise persons have advised to cure 
the passions and longings of their children, by letting them 
taste of every thing they passionately fancied ; for they 
should be sure to find less in it than they looked for, and 
the impatience of their being denied would be loosened 
and made slack: and when our wishings are no bigger 
than the thing deserves, and our usages of them according 
to our needs (which may be obtained by trying what they 
are, and what good they can do us,) we shall find in all 
pleasures so little entertainment, that the vanity of the 
possession will soon reprove the violence of the appetite. 
And if this permission be in innocent instances, it may be 
of good use ; but Solomon tried it in all things, taking his 
fill of all pleasures', and soon grew weary of them all. 
The same thing we may do by reason, which we do by 
experience, if either we will look upon pleasures, as we are 


OF TEMPERANCE IN EATING. 


51 

sure they look when they go off, after their enjoyment; or 
if we will credit the experience of those men, who have 
tasted them and loathed them. 

5. Often consider and contemplate the joys of heaven, 
that when they have filled thy desires which are the sails 
of the soul, thou mayest steer only thither, and never more 
look back to Sodom. And when thv soul dwells above, and 
looks down upon the pleasures of the world, they seem like 
things at distance, little and contemptible, and men running 
after the satisfaction of their sottish appetites seem foolish 
as fishes, thousands of them running after a rotten worm, 
that covers a deadly hook; or, at the best, but like children, 
with great noise pursuing a bubble rising from a walnut- 
shell, which ends sooner than the noise. 

6. To this the example of Christ and his apostles, of 
Moses, and all the wise men of all ages of the world, will 
much help; who, understanding how to distinguish good 
from evil, did choose a sad and melancholy way to felicity, 
rather than the broad, pleasant, and easy path, to folly, and 
misery. 

But this is but the general. Its first particular is tem¬ 
perance. 

SECTION II. 

Of Temperance in Eating and Drinlcing . 

Sobriety is the bridle of the passion of desire, and tem¬ 
perance is the bit and curb of that bridle, a restraint put 
into a man’s mouth, a moderate use of meat and drink, so 
as may best consist with our health, and may not hinder 
but help the works of the soul by its necessary supporting 
us, and ministering cheerfulness and refreshment. 

Temperance consists in the actions of the soul princi¬ 
pally ; for it is a grace that chooses natural means in order 
to proper, and natural, and holy ends : it is exercised 
about eating and drinking, because they are necessary ; 
but therefore it permits the use of them, only as they mi¬ 
nister to lawful ends ; it does not eat and drink for plea¬ 
sure, but for need, and for refreshment, which is a part or 
a degree of need. I deny not but eating and drinking 
may be , and in healthful bodies, always is, with pleasure; 
because there is in nature no greater pleasure, than that all 
the appetites, which God hath made, should be satisfied: 
and a man may choose a morsel that is pleasant, the less 


52 


OF TEMPERANCE 


pleasant being rejected as being less useful, less apt to 
nourish, or more agreeing with an infirm stomach, or when 
the day is festival by order, or by private joy. In all these 
eases it is permitted to receive a more free delight, and to 
design it too, as the less principal: that is, that the chief 
reason why we choose the more delicious, be the serving 
that end, for which such refreshments and choices are per¬ 
mitted. But when delight is the only end, and rests itself, 
and dwells there long, then eating and drinking is not a 
serving of God, but an inordinate action; because it is 
not in the way to that end, whither God directed it. But 
the choosing of a delicate before a more ordinary dish is 
to be done, as other human actions are, in which there are 
no degrees and precise natural limits described, but a la¬ 
titude is indulged; it must be done moderately, prudently, 
and according to the accounts of wise, religious, and sober 
men : and then God, who gave us such variety of creatures 
and our choice to use which we will, may receive glory 
from our temperate use, and thanksgiving; and we may use 
them indifferently without scruple, and a making them to 
become snares to us, either by too licentious and studied 
use of them, or restrained and scrupulous fear of using them 
at all, but in such certain circumstances, in which no man 
can be sure he is not mistaken. 

But temperance in meat and drink is to be estimated by 
the following measures. 

Measures of Temperance in Eating. 

1. Eat not before the time, unless necessity, or charity, 
or any intervening accident, which may make it reason¬ 
able and prudent should happen. Remember, it had al¬ 
most cost Jonathan his life, because he tasted a little honey 
before the sun went down, contrary to the king’s command¬ 
ment ; and although a great need, which he had, excused 
him from the sin of gluttony, yet it is inexcusable, when 
thou eatest before the usual time, and thrustest thy hand 
into the dish unseasonably, out of greediness of the pleasure. 
and impatience of the delay. 

2. Eat not hastily and impatiently, but with such decent 
and timely action, that your eating be a human act, sub¬ 
ject to deliberation and choice, and that you may consider 
in the eating: whereas he that eats hastily, cannot consi¬ 
der particularly of the circumstances, degrees, and little 


IN EATING. 


53 


accidents and chances, that happen in his meal; but may 
contract many little indecencies, and be suddenly surprised. 

3. Eat not delicately, or nicely, that is, be not trouble- 
some to thyself or others in the choice of thy meats, or the 
delicacy of thy sauces. It was imputed as a sin to the 
sons of Israel, that they loathed manna and longed for 
flesh: “ the quails stuck in their nostrils, and the wrath of 
God fell upon them.” And for the manner of dressing, 
the sons ol Eli were noted of indiscreet curiosity : they 
would not have the flesh boiled, but raw, that they might 
roast it with fire. Not that it was a sin to eat it, or desire 
meat roasted ; but that when it was appointed to be boiled, 
they refused it: which declared it an intemperate and a nice 
palate. It is lawful in all senses to comply with a weak 
and a nice stomach: but not with a nice and curious pa¬ 
late. When our health requires it, that ought to be pro¬ 
vided for; but not so our sensuality and intemperate long¬ 
ings. Whatsoever is set before you, eat; if it be provided 
for you, you may eat it, be it ever so delicate ; and be it 
plain and common, so it be wholesome, and fit for you, it 
must not be refused upon curiosity : for every degree of 
that is a degree of intemperance. Happy and innocent 
were the ages of our forefathers, who ate herbs and parched 
corn, and drank the pure stream, and broke their fast with 
nuts and roots ; and when they were permitted flesh, ate it 
only dressed with hunger and fire ; and the first sauce they 
had was bitter herbs, and sometimes bread dipped in vine¬ 
gar. But, in this circumstance, moderation is to be reck¬ 
oned in proportion to the present customs, to the company, 
to education, and the judgment of honest and wise persons, 
and the necessities of nature. 

4. Eat not too much: load neither thy stomach nor thy 
understanding. “ If thou sit at a bountiful table, be not 
greedy upon it, and say not there is much meat on it. Re¬ 
member that a wicked eye is an evil thing: and what is 
created more wicked than an eye ? Therefore it weepeth 
upon every occasion. Stretch not thy hand withersoever it 
looketh, and thrust it not with him into the dish. A very 
little is sufficient for a man well nurtured, and he fetcheth 
not his wind short upon his bed.” 

Signs and Effects of Temperance. 

We shall best know, that we have the grace of temper 
G 2 


OF TEMPERANCE 


54 

ance by the following signs, which are as so many argu¬ 
ments to engage us also upon its study and practice. 

1. A temperate man is modest: greediness is unman¬ 
nerly and rude. And this is intimated in the advice of the 
son of Sirach, “ When thou sittest amongst many, reach 
not thy hand out first of all. Leave off first for manners’ 
sake, and be not insatiable, lest thou offend.” 2. Tem¬ 
perance is accompanied with gravity of deportment: gree¬ 
diness is garish, and rejoices loosely at the sight of dain¬ 
ties. 3. Sound, but moderate, sleep, is its sign and its 
effect. Sound sleep cometh of moderate eating: he riseth 
early, and his wits are with him. 4. A spiritual joy and 
a devout prayer. 5. A suppressed and seldom anger. 
6. A command of our thoughts and passions. 7. A sel¬ 
dom-returning, and a never-prevailing temptation. 8. To 
which add, that a temperate person is not curious of fan¬ 
cies and deliciousness. He thinks not much, and speaks 
not often, of meat and drink; hath a healthful body and 
long life, unless it be hindered by some other accident: 
whereas to gluttony, the pain of watching and choler, the 
pangs of the belly are continual company. And therefore 
Stratonicas said handsomely concerning the luxury of the 
Rhodians, “ They built houses, as if they were immortal; 
but they feasted, as if they meant to live but a little while.” 
And Antipater, by his reproach of the old glutton Demades, 
well expressed the baseness of this sin, saying, that De¬ 
mades, now old, and always a glutton, was like a spent 
sacrifice, nothing left of him but his belly and his tongue, 
all the man besides is gone. 

Of Drunkenness. 

But I desire that it be observed, that because intempe¬ 
rance in eating is not so soon perceived by others as im¬ 
moderate drinking, and the outward visible effects of it are 
not either so notorious or so ridiculous, therefore gluttony 
is not of so great disreputation amongst men as drunken¬ 
ness ; yet, according to its degree, it puts on the greatness 
of the sin before God, and is most strictly to be attended 
to, lest we be surprised by our security and want of dili¬ 
gence, and the intemperance is alike criminal in both, ac¬ 
cording as the affections are either to the meat or drink. 
Gluttony is more uncharitable to the body, and drunken¬ 
ness to the soul, or the understanding part of man ; and 


IN DRINKING. 


55 

therefore in Scripture is more frequently forbidden and de¬ 
claimed against than the other : and sobriety hath by use 
obtained to signify temperance in drinking. 

Drunkenness is an immoderate affection and use of 
drink. That I call immoderate, that is besides or beyond 
that order of good things, for which God hath given us the 
use of drink. The ends are digestion of our meat, cheer¬ 
fulness and refreshment of our spirits, or any end of health; 
besides which, if we go, or at any time beyond it, it is in¬ 
ordinate and criminal, it is the vice of drunkenness. It is 
forbidden by our blessed Saviour in these words :* “ Take 
heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be over¬ 
charged with surfeiting and drunkenness surfeiting, that 
is the evil effects, the sottishness and remaining stupidity 
of habitual, or of the last night’s drunkenness. For Christ 
forbids both the actual and habitual intemperance ; not only 
the effect of it, but also the affection to it; for in both 
there is sin. He that drinks but little, if that little make 
him drunk, and if he know before hand his own infirmity, 
is guilty of surfeiting, not of drunkenness. But he that 
drinks much, and is strong to bear it, and is not deprived 
of his reasons violently, is guilty of the sin of drunkenness. 
It is a sin, not to prevent such uncharitable effects upon 
the body and understanding: and therefore a man that 
loves not the drink, is guilty of surfeiting, if he does not 
watch to prevent the evil effect: and it is a sin and the 
greater of the two, inordinately to love or to use the drink, 
though the surfeiting or violence do not follow. Good 
therefore is the counsel of the son of Sirach, “ Show not 
thy valiantness in wine; for wine hath destroyed many.” 

Evil consequents to Drunkenness. 

The evils and sad consequents of drunkenness (the con¬ 
sideration of which are as so many arguments to avoid the 
sin) are to this sense reckoned by the writers of holy Scrip¬ 
ture, and other wise personages of the world. 1- It 
causeth woes and mischief,f wounds and sorrow, sin and 
shame ; it maketh bitterness of spirit, brawling and quar¬ 
relling- ; it increaseth rage and lesseneth strength; it 
maketh red eyes, and a loose and babbling tongue. 2. If 
particularly ministers to lust, and yet disables the body ; 
so that in effect it makes man wanton as a satyr, and im* 

* Luke xxi. 34. t Prov. xxiii. 29. 


56 OF TEMPERANCE IN DRINKING. 

potent as age. And Solomon, in enumerating the evils of 
this vice, adds this to the account,* “thine eyes shall be 
hold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse 
thingsas if the drunkard were only desire, and then im¬ 
patience muttering and enjoying like an eunuch embracing 
a woman. 3. It besots and hinders the actions of the un¬ 
derstanding, making a man brutish in his passions, and a 
fool in his reason ; and differs nothing from madness, but 
that it is voluntary, and so is an equal evil in nature, 
and a worse in manners. 4. It takes off all the guards, 
and lets loose the reigns of all those evils, to which a man is 
by his nature or is by evil customs inclined, and from which 
he is restrained by reason and severe principles. Drunk¬ 
enness calls off the watchmen from their towers; and then 
all the evils that can proceed from a loose heart, and an 
untied tongue, and a dissolute spirit, and an unguarded, 
unlimited will, all that we may put upon the accounts of 
drunkenness. 5. It extinguishes and quenches the Spi¬ 
rit of God, for no man can be filled with the spirit of God 
and with wine at the same time. And therefore St. Paul 
makes them exclusive of each other :f “ Be not drunk with 
wine wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” 
And since Joseph’s cup was put into Benjamin’s sack, no 
man had a divining goblet. 6. It opens all the sanctua¬ 
ries of nature, and discovers the nakedness of the soul, all 
its weaknesses and follies; it multiplies sins and discovers 
them; it makes a man incapable of being a private friend, 
or a public counsellor. 7. It taketh a man’s soul into 
slavery and imprisonment more than any vice whatsoever,^: 
because it disarms a man of all his reason and his wisdom, 
whereby he might be cured, and therefore commonly it 
grows upon him with age ; a drunkard being still more a 
fool and less a man. I need not add any sad examples, 
since all story and all ages have too many of them. Am¬ 
mon was slain by his brother Absolom, when he was warm 
and high with wine. Simon the high-priest, and two of 
his sons, were slain by their brother at a drunken feast. 
Holofernes was drunk when Judith slew him; and all the 
great things that Daniel spake of Alexander, were drowned 
with a surfeit of one night’s intemperance : and the drunk¬ 
enness of Noah and Lot are upon record to eternal ages, 
that in those early instances, and righteous persons, and 
* Prov. xxiii. 33. t Ephes. v. 18. t Prov. xxxi. 4. 


OF TEMPERANCE. 


57 

less criminal drunkenness, than is that of Christians in this 
period of the world, God might show, that very great evils 
are prepared to punish this vice ; no less than shame, and 
slavery, and incest; the first upon Noah, the second upon 
one of his sons, and the third in the person of Lot. 

Signs of Drunkenness. 

But if it be inquired concerning the periods and distinct 
significations of this crime; and when a man is said to be 
drunk; to this I answer, that drunkenness is in the same 
manner to be judged as sickness. As every illness or vio¬ 
lence done to health, in every part of its continuance, is a 
part or degree of sickness; so is every going off from our 
natural and common temper and our usual severity of be¬ 
haviour, a degree of drunkenness. He is not only drunk, 
that can drink no more ; for few are so: but he hath sinned 
in a degree of drunkenness, who hath done any thing to¬ 
wards it beyond his proper measure. But its parts and 
periods are usually thus reckoned. 1. Apish gestures. 2. 
Much talking. 3. Immoderate laughing. 4. Dulncss of 
sense. 5. Scurrility, that is, wanton, or jeering, or abusive 
language. 6. A useless understanding. 7. Stupid sleep. 
8. Epilepsies, or fallings and reelings, and beastly vomitings. 
The least of these, even when the tongue begins to be un¬ 
tied, is a degree of drunkenness. 

But that we may avoid the sin of intemperance in meats 
and drinks, besides the former rules of measures, these 
counsels also may be useful. 

Rules for obtaining Temperance. 

1. Be not often present at feasts, nor at all in dissolute 
company, when it may be avoided : for variety of pleasing 
objects steals away the heart of man; and company is 
either violent or enticing; and we are weak or complying, 
or perhaps desirous enough to be abused. But if you be 
unavoidably or indiscreetly engaged, let not mistaken civi¬ 
lity or good nature engage thee either to the temptation of 
staying (if thou understandest thy weakness,) or the sin of 
drinking inordinately. 

2. Be severe in your judgment concerning your pro¬ 
portions, and let no occasion rnaj^e you enlarge far beyond 
your ordinary. For a man is surprised by parts ; and 
while he thinks one glass more will not make him drunk 
that one glass hath disabled him from well discerning his 


58 


OF TEMPERANCE. 


present condition and neighbour danger. “While men 
think themselves wise, they become fools they think they 
shall taste the aconite and not die, or crown their heads w ith 
juice of poppy and not be drow r sy ; and if they drink off the 
whole vintage, still they think they can swallow another 
goblet. But remember this, whenever you begin to consi¬ 
der, whether you may safely take one draught more, it is then 
high time to give over. Let that be accounted a sign late 
enough to break off; for every reason to doubt, is a sufficient 
reason to part the company. 

3. Come not to table, but when thy need invites thee: 
and if thou beest in health, leave something of thy appetite 
unfilled, something of thy natural heat unemployed, that it 
may secure thy digestion, and serve other needs of nature 
or the spirit. 

4. Propound to thyself (if thou beest in a capacity) a 
constant rule of living, of eating and drinking: which 
though it may not be fit to observe scrupulously, lest it be¬ 
come a snare to thy conscience, or endanger thy health 
upon every accidental violence ; yet let not thy rule be bro¬ 
ken often nor much, but upon great necessity and in small 
degrees. 

5. Never urge any man to eat or drink beyond his own 
limits and his own desires. He that does otherwise, is 
drunk with his brother’s surfeit, and reels and falls with 
his intemperance ; that is, the sin of drunkenness is upon 
both their scores ; they both lie wallowing in the guilt. 

6. Use St. Paul’s instruments of sobriety : “ Let us who 
are of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-plate of 
faith and love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation.” 
Faith, hope, and charity, are the best weapons in the 
world to fight against intemperance. The faith of the Ma¬ 
hometans forbids them to drink wine, and they abstain reli¬ 
giously, as the sons of Rechab: and the faith of Christ 
forbids drunkenness to us; and therefore is infinitely more 
powerful to suppress this vice, when we remember, that 
we are Christians, and to abstain from drunkenness and 
gluttony is part of the faith and discipline of Jesus, and 
that with these vices neither our love to God, nor our hopes 
of heaven can possibly consist; and therefore, when these 
enter the heart, the others' go out at the mouth; for this is 
the devil, that is cast out by fasting and prayer, which are 
the proper actions of these graces. 


OF CHASTITY. 


59 

7. As a pursuance of this rule, it is a good advice, that 
as we begin and end all our times of eating with prayer 
and thanksgiving; so, at the meal, we remove ^nd carry 
up our mind and spirit to the celestial table, often think¬ 
ing of it, and often desiring it; that by enkindling thy de¬ 
sire to heavenly banquets, thou mayest be indifferent and 
less passionate for the earthly. 

8. Mingle discourses, pious, or in some sense profitable 
and in all senses charitable and innocent, with ;by meal, as 
occasion is ministered. 

9. Let your drink so serve your meat, as your meat 
doth your health; that it may be apt to convey and digest 
it, and refresh the spirits ; but let it never go beyond such 
a refreshment, as may a little heighten the present load of 
a sad or troubled spirit; never to inconvenience, lightness, 
sottishness, vanity, or intemperance ; and know, that the 
loosing the bands of the tongue, and the very first dissolu¬ 
tion of its duty, is one degree of the intemperance. 

10. In all cases be careful, that you be not brought un¬ 
der the power of such things, which otherwise are lawful 
enough in the use. “ All things are lawful for me ; but I 
will not be brought under the power of any thing;” said St. 
Paul. And to be perpetually longing, and impatiently 
desirous of any thing, so that a man cannot abstain from 
it, is to lose a man’s liberty, and to become a servant of 
meat and drink, or smoke. And I wish this last instance 
were more considered by persons, who little suspect them¬ 
selves guilty of intemperance, though their desires are strong 
and impatient, and the use of it perpetual and unreasona¬ 
ble to all purposes, but that they have made it habitual anc^ 
necessary, as intemperance itself is made to some men. 

11. Use those advices, which are prescribed as instru¬ 
ments to suppress voluptuousness, in the foregoing section. 

SECTION 1IL 
Of Chastity. 

Reader, stay, and read not the advices of the following 
section, unless thou hast a chaste spirit; or desirest to 
be chaste ; or at least are apt to consider, whether you 
ought or no. For there are some spirits so atheistical, 
and some so wholly possessed with a spirit of unclean¬ 
ness, that they turn the most prudent and chaste dis- 


OF CHASTITY. 


60 

courses into dirt and filthy apprehensions; like choleric 
stomachs, changing their very cordials and medicines into 
bitterness*; and, in a literal sense, turning the grace of God 
into wantonness. They study cases of conscience in the 
matter of carnal sins not to avoid but to learn ways how 
to offend God and pollute their own spirits; and search 
their houses with a sun-beam, that they may be instructed 
in all the corners of nastiness. I have used all the care I 
could, in the following periods, that I might neither be 
wanting to assist those, that need it, nor yet minister any 
occasion of fancy or vainer thoughts to those, that need 
them not. If any man will snatch the pure taper from my 
hand, and hold it to the devil, he will only burn his own 
fingers, but shall not rob me of the reward of my care and 
good intention, since I have taken heed how to express 
the following duties, and given him caution how to read 
them. 

Chastity is that duty, which was mystically intended by 
God in the law of circumcision. It is the circumcision of 
the heart, the cutting off all superfluity of naughtiness, and 
a suppression of all irregular desires in the matter of a 
sensual or carnal pleasure. I call all desires irregular and 
sinful, that are not sanctified: 1. By the holy institution, 
or by being within the protection of marriage; 2. By 

being within the order of nature ; 3. By being within the 
moderation of Christian modesty. Against the first are 
fornication, adultery, and all voluntary pollutions of either 
sex. Against the second are all unnatural lusts and inces¬ 
tuous mixtures. Against the third is all immoderate use of 
permitted beds; concerning which judgment is to be made, 
as concerning meats and drinks ; there being no certain de¬ 
gree of frequency or intention prescribed to all persons, 
but it is to be ruled as the other actions of a man, by pro¬ 
portion to the end, by the dignity of the person in the ho¬ 
nour and severity of being a Christian, and by other circum¬ 
stances, of which I am to give account. 

Chastity is that grace, which forbids and restrains all 
these, keeping the body and soul pure in that state, in 
which it is placed by God, whether of the single or of the 
married life. Concerning which our duty is thus described 
by St. Paul, “ For this is the will of God, even your sanc¬ 
tification, that ye should abstain from fornication: that 
every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in 


OF CHASTITY. 


sanctification and honour; not in the lust of concupiscence, 
even as the Gentiles which know not God.”* 

Chastity is either abstinence or continence. Abstinence 
is that of virgins or widows: continence of married per¬ 
sons. Chaste marriages are honourable and pleasing to 
God : widowhood is pitiable in its solitariness and loss, but 
amiable and comely, when it is adorned with gravity and 
purity, and not sullied with remembrances of the passed 
licence, nor with present desires of returning to a second 
bed. But virginity is a life of angels, the enamel of the 
soul, the huge advantage of religion, the great opportunity 
for the retirements of devotion : and, being empty of cares, 
it is full of prayers ; being unmingled with the world, it is 
apt to converse with God ; and by not feeling the warmth 
of a too-forward and indulgent nature, flames out with holy 
fires, till it be burning like the cherubim and the most ec- 
stasied order of holy and unpolluted spirits. 

Natural virginity, of itself, is not a state more acceptable 
to God: but that which is chosen and voluntary, in order 
to the conveniences of religion and separation from worldly 
encumbrances, is therefore better than the married life, 
not that it is more holy, but that it is a freedom from cares, 
an opportunity to spend more time in spiritual employ¬ 
ments ; it is not allayed with business and attendances 
upon lower affairs : and if it be a chosen condition to these 
ends, it containeth in it a victory over lusts, and greater 
desires of religion, and self-denial; and therefore is more 
excellent than the married life, in that degree in which it 
hath greater religion, and a greater mortification, a less 
satisfaction of natural desires, and a greater fulness of the 
spiritual: and just so is to expect that little'coronet or spe¬ 
cial reward, which God hath prepared (extraordinary and 
besides the great crown of all faithful souls) for those, 
“ who have not defiled themselves with women, but follow 
the Virgin Lamb for ever.”f 

But some married persons, even in their marriage, do 
better please God, than some virgins in their state of vir¬ 
ginity: they, by giving great example of conjugal affection 
by preserving their faith unbroken, by educating children 
in the fear of God, by patience and contentedness and holy 
thoughts, and the exercise of virtues proper to that state, 


* 1 Thess. iv. 3-—5. 

H 


t Apoc. xiv. 4. 


62 


OF CHASTITY. 


do not only please God, but do in a higher degree than 
those virgins, whose piety is not answerable to their great 
opportunities and advantages. 

However, married persons, and widows, and virgins, are 
all servants of God and coheirs in the inheritance of Jesus, 
if they live within the restraints and laws of their particular 
estate, chastely, temperately, justly, and religiously. 

The evil consequents of Uncleanness. 

The blessings and proper effects of chastity we shall 
best understand, by reckoning the evils of uncleanness and 
carnality. 

1. Uncleanness of all vices is the most shameful. “ The 
eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye 
shall see me ; and disguiseth his face. In the dark they 
dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves 
in the day-time ; they know not the light ,* for the morn¬ 
ing is to them as the shadow of death. He is swift as the 
waters ; their portion is cursed in the earth: he beholdeth 
not the way of the vineyards.”* Shame is the eldest daugh¬ 
ter of uncleanness. 

2. The appetites of uncleanness are full of cares and 
trouble, and its fruition is sorrow and repentance. The 
way of the adulterer is hedged with thorns ;j* full of fears 
and jealousies, burning desires and impatient waitings, 
tediousness of delay, and sufferance of affronts, and amaze¬ 
ments of discovery. 

3. Most of its kinds are of that condition, that they in¬ 
volve the ruin of two souls; and he that is a fornicator or 
adulterous, steals the soul, as well as dishonours the body 
of his neighbour; and so it becomes like the sin of falling 
Lucifer, who brought a part of the stars with his tail from 
heaven. 

4. Of all carnal sins it is that alone, which the devil 
takes delight to imitate and counterfeit; communicating 
with witches and impure persons in the corporal act, but 
in this only. 

5. Uncleanness with all its kinds is a vice, which hath 
a professed enmity against the body. “ Every sin which 
a man doth, is without the body ; but he that committeth 
fornication, sinneth against his own body.”;j: 

6. Uncleanness is hugely contrary to the spirit of go 

* Job xxiv. 15, &c. t Hos. ii. 6. t 1 Cor. vi. 18 


OF CHASTITY. 


63 


vernment by embasing the spirit of a man, making it ef¬ 
feminate, sneaking, soft, and foolish, without courage, with¬ 
out confidence. David felt this after his folly with Bath- 
sheba, he fell to unkingly arts and stratagems to hide the 
crime; and he did nothing but increase it, and remained 
timorous and poor-spirited, till he prayed to God once 
more to establish him with a free and a princely spirit. 
And no superior dare strictly observe disc : pline upon his 
charge, if he hath let himself loose to the shame of incon¬ 
tinence. 

7. The Gospel hath added two arguments against un¬ 
cleanness, which were never before used, nor indeed could 
be: since God hath given the Holy Spirit to them that are 
baptized, and rightly confirmed, and entered into covenant 
with him, our bodies are made temples of the Holy Ghost, 
in which he dwells; and therefore, uncleanness is sacri¬ 
lege, and defiles a temple. It is St. Paul’s argument, 
“ Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost ?”* and “ He that defiles a temple, him will God 
destroy.f Therefore glorify God in your bodies,” that is, 
flee fornication. To which, for the likeness of the argu¬ 
ment, add, “ that our bodies are members of Christ; and 
therefore God forbid, that we should take the members of 
Christ, and make them members of a harlot.” So that un¬ 
cleanness dishonours Christ, and dishonours the Holy Spirit: 
it is a sin against God, and in this sense a sin against the 
Holy Ghost. 

8. The next special argument, which the Gospel minis¬ 
ters especially against adultery, and for the preservation 
of the purity of marriage, is, that marriage is by Christ hal¬ 
lowed into a mystery, to signify the sacramental and mysti¬ 
cal union of Christ and his church.:}: He therefore that 
breaks this knot, which the church and their mutual faith 
hath tied, and Christ hath knit up into a mystery, dishonours 
a great rite of Christianity, of high, spiritual, and excellent 
signification. 

9. St. Gregory reckons uncleanness to be the parent of 
these monsters, blindness of mind, inconsideration, preci¬ 
pitancy or giddiness in actions, self-love, hatred of God, 
love of the present pleasures, a despite or despair of the 
joys of religion here, and of heaven hereafter. Whereas a 
pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and 

* 1 Cor. vi. 19. + 1 Cor. iii. 17. t Ephes. v. 32. 


OF CHASTITY. 


64 

deliberation, sober counsels and ingenuous actions, oper 
deportment and sweet carriage, sincere principles and un* 
prejudicate understanding, love of God and self-denial, 
peace and confidence, holy prayers and spiritual comfort, 
and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish 
and beastly pleasures of unchastity. “For to overcome 
pleasure is the greatest pleasure; and no victory is greater 
than that which is gotten over our lusts and filthy in¬ 
clinations.” 

10. Add to all these, the public dishonesty and disreput¬ 
ation, that all the nations of the world have cast upon 
adulterous and unhallowed embraces. Abimelech, to the 
men of Gerar, made it death to meddle with the wife of 
Isaac ; and Judah condemned Thamar to be burnt for her 
adulterous conception; and God, besides the law made to 
put the adulterous person to death, did constitute a settled 
and constant miracle to discover the adultery of a sus¬ 
pected woman,* that her bowels should burst with drink¬ 
ing the waters of jealousy. The Egyptian law was to 
cut off the nose of the adulteress, and the offending part of 
the adulterer. The Locrians put out both the adulterer’s 
eyes. The Germans (as Tacitus reports,) placed the 
adulteress amidst her kindred naked, and shaved her head, 
and caused her husband to beat her with clubs through 
the city. The Gortynaeans crowned the man with wool, to 
shame him for his effeminacy; and the Cumani caused the 
woman to ride upon an ass, naked and hooted at, and for 
ever after called her by an appellative of scorn, “ a rider 
upon the ass.” All nations, barbarous and civil, agreeing 
in their general design of rooting so dishonest and shameful 
a vice from under heaven. 

The middle ages of the Church were not pleased, that 
the adulteress should be put to death: but in fhe primitive 
ages, the civil laws, by which Christians were then go¬ 
verned, gave leave to the wronged husband to kill his adul¬ 
terous wife, if he took her in the fact: but because it was 
a privilege indulged to men rather than a direct detestation 
of the crime, a consideration of the injury rather than of the 
uncleanne^p, therefore it was soon altered, but yet hath 
caused an inquiry, Whether is worse, the adultery of the 
man or the woman 1 

The resolution of which case, in order to our present af- 

* Numb. v. 24. 


Ob’ CHASTITY. 


65 


fair, is thus : in respect of the person,"the fault is greater 
in a man than in a woman, who is of a more pliant and 
easy spirit, and weaker understanding, and hath nothing 
to supply the unequal strengths of men, but the defensa- 
tive of a passive nature and armour of modesty, which is 
the natural ornament of that sex% “ And it is unjust that 
the man should demand chastity and severity from his wife, 
which himself will not observe towards her,” said the good 
Emperor Antoninus: it is as if the man should persuade 
his wife to fight against those enemies, to which he had 
yielded himself a prisoner. 2. In respect of the effects 
and evil consequents, the adultery of the woman is worse 
as bringing bastardy into a family, and disinherisons or 
great injuries to the lawful children, and infinite violations 
of peace, and murders, and divorces, and all the effects of 
rage and madness. 3. But in respect of the crime, and as 
relating to God, they are equal, intolerable, and damnable : 
and since it is no more permitted to men to have many 
wives, than to women to have many husbands, and that in 
this respect their privilege is equal, their sin is so too. 
And this is the case of the question in Christianity. And 
the Church anciently refused to admit such persons to the 
holy communion, until they had done seven years’ pe¬ 
nances in fasting, in sackcloth, in severe inflictions and in¬ 
struments of chastity and sorrow, according to the disci¬ 
pline of those ages. 

Acts of Chastity in general . 

The actions and proper offices of the grace of chastity 
in general, are these. 

1. To resist all unchaste thoughts: at no hand, enter¬ 
taining pleasure in the unfruitful fancies and remembrances 
of uncleanness, although no definite desire or resolution be 
entertained. 

2. At no hand, to entertain any desire, or any fantastic, 
imaginative loves, though by shame, or disability, or other 
circumstances, they be restrained from act. 

3. To have a chaste eye and hand ; for it is all one with 
what part of the body we commit adultery: and if a man 
lets his eye loose, and enjoys the lust of that, he is an adul¬ 
terer. “ Look not upon a woman to lust after her.” And 
supposing all the other members restrained, yet if the eye 
be permitted to lust, the man can no otherwise be called 

a 2 


66 


OF CHASTITY. 


chaste, than he can be called severe and mortified, that 
sits all day long- seeing plays and revellings, and out of 
greediness to fill his eye, neglects his belly. There are 
some vessels, which, if you offer to lift by the belly or 
bottom, you cannot stir them, but are soon removed, if 
you take them by the ears. It matters not, with which of 
your members you are taken and carried off from your duty 
and severity. 

4. To have a heart and mind chaste and pure; that is 
detesting all uncleanness; disliking all its motions, past 
actions, circumstances, likenesses, discourses; and this 
ought to be the chastity of virgins and widows, of old per¬ 
sons and eunuchs especially, and generally of all men ac¬ 
cording to their several necessities. 

5. To discourse chastely and purely ; with great care de¬ 
clining all indecencies of language, chastening the tongue, 
and restraining it with grace, as vapours of wine are re¬ 
strained with a bunch of myrrh. 

6. To disapprove by an after-act all involuntary-and 
natural pollutions: for if a man delights in having suffered 
any natural pollution, and with pleasure remembers it, he 
chooses that, which was in itself involuntary ; and that 
which, being natural, was innocent, becoming voluntary, is 
made useful. 

7. They that have performed these duties and parts of 
chastity, will certainly abstain from all exterior actions of 
uncleanness, thostf noonday and midnight devils, those law¬ 
less and ungodly worshippings of shame and unclean¬ 
ness, whose birth is in trouble, whose growth is in folly, 
and whose end is in shame. 

But besides these general acts of chastity, which are 
common to all states of men and women, there are some 
few things proper to the severals. 

Acts of Virginal Chastity. 

1. Virgins must remember, that the virginity of the body 
is only excellent in order to the purity of the soul; who 
therefore must consider, that since they are in some mea¬ 
sure in a condition like that of angels, it is their duty to 
spend much of their time in angelical employment: for in 
the same degree that virgins live more spiritually than 
other persons, in the same degree is their virginity a more 
excellent state. But else it is no better than that of invo- 




\ 


OF CHASTITY. 57 

iuntary or constrained eunuchs; a misery and a trouble, 
or else a mere privation, as much without excellency as 
without mixture. 

2. Virgins must contend for a singular modesty ; whose 
first path must be an ignorance in the distinction of sexes, 
or their proper instruments; or if they accidentally be in¬ 
structed in that, it must be supplied with an inadvertency 
or neglect of all thoughts and remembrances of such differ¬ 
ence ; and the following parts of it must be pious and chaste 
thoughts, holy language, and modest carriage. 

3. Virgins must be retired and unpublic: for all freedom 
and looseness of society is a violence done to virginity, not 
in its natural, but in its moral capacity; that is, it loses part 
of its severity, strictness, and opportunity of advantages, by 
publishing that person, whose work is religion, whose com¬ 
pany is angels, whose thoughts must dwell in heaven, and 
separate from all mixtures of the world. 

4. Virgins have a peculiar obligation to charity: for this 
is virginity of the soul; as purity, integrity, and separation 
is of the body : which doctrine we are taught by St. Peter 
“ Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth 
through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see 
that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.”* For 
a virgin that consecrates her body to God, and pollutes her 
spirit with rage, or impatience, or inordinate anger, gives 
him what he most hates, a most foul and defiled soul. 

5. These rules are necessary for virgins, that offer that 
state to God, and mean not to enter into the state of mar¬ 
riage ; for they that only wait the opportunity of a conve¬ 
nient change, are to steer themselves by the general rules 
of chastity. 

j Rules for Widows , or vidual Chastity. 

For widows, the fontinel of whose desires hath been 
opened by the former permissions of the marriage-bed, they 
must remember, 

1. That God hath now restrained the former licence, 
bound up their eyes and shut up their heart into a narrower 
compass, and hath given them sorrow to be a bridle to their 
desires. A widow must be a mourner; and she that is not, 
cannot so well secure the chastity of her proper state. 

2. It is against public honesty to marry another man, sc 

* 1 Pet. i. 22. 




58 OF CHASTITY 

long as she is witli child by her former husband: and of 
the same fame, it is in a lesser proportion to marry within 
the year of mourning; but anciently it was infamous for 
her to marry, till by common account the body was dis* 
solved into its first principle of earth. 

3. A widow must restrain her memory and her fancy 
not recalling or recounting her former permissions and 
freer licences with any present delight; for then she opens 
that sluice, which her husband’s death and her own sorrow 
have shut up. 

4. A widow, that desires her widowhood should be a state 
pleasing to God, must spend her time as devoted virgins 
should, in fastings and prayers, and charity. 

5. A widow must forbid herself to use those temporal 
solaces, which in her former estate were innocent, but now 
are dangerous. 

Rules for Married Persons , or Matrimonial Chastity 

Concerning married persons, besides the keeping of their 
mutual faith and contract with each other, these particulars 
are useful to be observed. 

1. Although their mutual endearments are safe within the 
protection of marriage, yet they that have wives or husbands, 
must be, as though they had them not; that is, they must 
have an affection greater to each other than they have to any 
person in the world, but not greater than they have to God: 
but that they be ready to part with all interest in each other’s 
person rather than sin against God. 

2. In their permissions and licence, they must be sure 
to observe the order of nature and the ends of God. “ He 
is an ill husband, that uses his wife as a man treats a har¬ 
lot,” having no other end but pleasure. Concerning which, 
our best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and 
drinking, there is an appetite to be satisfied, which cannot 
be done without pleasing that desire ; yet, since that de¬ 
sire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends, 
they should never be separate from those ends, but always 
be joined with all or one of these ends, “ with a desire of 
children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the 
cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each 
other but never with a purpose, either in act or desire, 
to separate the sensuality from these endfe which hallow it. 
Onan did separate his act from its proper end, and so or- 


OF CHASTITY. . 


69 

dered his embraces, that his wife should not conceive, and 
God punished him. 

3. Married persons must keep such modesty and decency 
of treating- each other, that they never force themselves into 
high and violent lusts, with arts and misbecoming devices: 
always remembering, that those mixtures are most innocent 
which are most simple and most natural, most orderly and 
most safe. 

4. It is a duty of matrimonial chastity, to be restrained 
and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures: con¬ 
cerning which, although no universal rule can antecedently 
be given to all persons, any more than to all bodies one 
proportion of meat and drink ; yet married persons are to 
estimate the degree of their licence according to the fol¬ 
lowing proportions. 1. That it be moderate, so as to con¬ 
sist with health. 2. That it be so ordered as not to be 
too expensive of time, that precious opportunity of working 
out our salvation. 3. That when duty is demanded, it be 
always paid (so far as is in our powers and election) accord¬ 
ing to the foregoing measures. 4. That it be with a tem¬ 
perate affection, without violent transporting desires, or 
too sensual applications. Concerning which a man is to 
make judgment by proportion to other actions, and the se¬ 
verities of his religion, and the sentences of sober and 
wise persons; always remembering, that marriage is a pro¬ 
vision for the supply of the natural necessities of the body, 
not for the artificial and procured appetites of the mind. 
And it is a sad truth, that many married persons, thinking 
that the flood-gates of liberty are set wide open without 
measures or restraints (so they sail in that channel,) have 
felt the final rewards of intemperance and lust, by their 
unlawful using of lawful permissions. Only let each of 
them be temperate, and both of them be modest. Socra¬ 
tes was wont to say, that those women, to whom nature 
hath not been- indulgent in good features and colours, 
should make it up themselves with excellent manners; 
and those who were beautiful and comely, should be care¬ 
ful, that so fair a body be not polluted with unhandsome 
usages. To which Plutarch adds', that a wife, if she be 
unhandsome, should consider how extremely ugly she should 
be, if she wanted modesty : but if she be handsome, let her 
think how gracious that beauty would be, if she superadds 
chastity. 


70 


OF CHASTITY. 


5. Married persons by consent are to abstain from their 
mutual entertainments at solemn times of devotion ; not as 
a duty of itself necessary, but as being - the most proper 
act of purity, which in their condition they can present to 
God, and being a good advantage for attending their pre¬ 
paration to the solemn duty and their demeanor in it. It 
is St. Paul’s counsel, that “ by consent for a time they 
should abstain, that they may give themselves to fasting 
and prayer.”* And though when Christians did receive 
the holy communion every day, it is certain they did not 
abstain, but had children: yet when the communion was 
more seldom, they did with religion abstain from the mar¬ 
riage-bed during the time of their solemn preparatory de¬ 
votions, as anciently they did from eating and drinking, till 
the solemnity of the day was past. 

6. It were well if married persons would, in their peni¬ 
tential prayers, and in their general confessions, suspect 
themselves, and accordingly ask a general pardon for all 
their indecencies, and more passionate applications of them¬ 
selves in the offices of marriage: that what is lawful and 
honourable in its kind, may not be sullied with imperfect 
circumstances; or if it be, it may be made clean again by 
the interruption and recallings of such a repentance, of 
which such uncertain parts of action are capable. 

But because of all the dangers of a Christian, none more 
pressing and troublesome than the temptations to lust, no 
enemy more dangerous than that of the flesh, no accounts 
greater than what we have to reckon for at the audit of 
concupiscence, therefore it concerns all, that would be safe 
from this death, to arm themselves by the following rules, 
to prevent, or to cure all the wounds of our flesh made by 
the poisoned arrows of lust. 

Remedies against Uncleanness. 

1. When a temptation of lust assaults thee, do not resist 
it by heaping up arguments against it, and disputing with 
it, considering its offers and its danger, but fly from it, that 
is, think not at all of it; lay aside all consideration con¬ 
cerning it, and turn away from it by any severe and laud¬ 
able thought of business. Saint Jerome very wittily re¬ 
proves the Gentile superstition, who pictured the virgin- 
deities armed with a shield and lance, as if chastity could 

* 1 Cor. vii. 5. 


OF CHASTITY. 


» 


71 


not be defended without war and direct contention. No 
this enemy is to be treated otherwise. If you hear it 
speak, though but to dispute with it, it ruins you ; and the 
very arguments you go about to answer, leave a relish upon 
the tongue. A man may be burned, if he goes near the 
fire, though but to quench his house ; and by handling pitch, 
though but to draw it from your clothes, you defile your 
fingers. 

2. Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time 
with severe and useful employment; for lust usually creeps 
in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed, and 
the body is at ease. For no easy, healthful, and idle per¬ 
son was ever chaste, if he could be tempted. But of all 
employments bodily labour is most useful, and of greatest 
benefit for the driving away the devil. 

3. Give no entertainment to the beginnings, the first 
motions and secret whispers of the spirit of impurity. For 
if you totally suppress it, it dies ; if you permit the furnace 
to breathe its smoke and flame out at any vent, it will rage 
to the consumption of the whole. This cockatrice is soon¬ 
est crushed in the shell ,* but if it grows, it turns to a ser¬ 
pent, and a dragon, and a devil. 

4. Corporal mortification, and hard usages of our body, 
hath, by all ages of the church, been accounted a good in¬ 
strument, and of some profit against the spirit of fornica¬ 
tion. A spare diet, and a thin coarse table, seldom re¬ 
freshment, frequent fasts, not violent, and interrupted with 
returns to ordinary feeding, but constantly little, unplea¬ 
sant, of wholesome but sparing nourishment: for by such 
cutting off the provisions of victual, we shall weaken the 
strengths of our enemy. To which, if we add lyings upon 
the ground, painful postures in prayer, reciting our devo¬ 
tions with our arms extended at full length, like Moses 
praying against Amalek, our blessed Saviour hanging upon 
his painful bed of sorrows, the cross, and (if the lust be 
upon us, and sharply tempting) by inflicting any smart to 
overthrow the strongest passion by the most violent pain, 
we shall find great ease for the present, and the resolution 
and apt sufferance against the future danger. And this 
was St. Paul’s remedy, “ I bring my body underhe 
used some rudenesses towards it. But it was a great no¬ 
bleness of chastity which St. Jerome reports of a son of 
the King of Nicomedia, who being tempted upon flowers 


72 


OF CHASTITY. 


and a perfumed bed, with a soft violence, but yet tied down 
to the temptation, and solicited with circumstances of Asian 
luxury by an impure courtesan, lest the easiness of his 
posture should abuse him, spit out his tongue into her face: 
to represent, that no virtue hath cost the saints so much as 
this of chastity. 

5. Fly from all occasions, temptations, loosenesses of 
company, balls and revellings, indecent mixtures of wan¬ 
ton dancings, idle talk, private society with strange women, 
starings upon a beauteous face, the company of women 
that are singers, amorous gestures, garish and wanton 
dresses, feasts and liberty, banquets and perfumes, wine 
and strong drinks, which are made to persecute chastity ; 
some of these being the very prologues to lust, and the 
most innocent of them being but like condited or pickled 
mushrooms, which if carefully corrected, and seldom tasted, 
may be harmless, but can never do good; ever remem¬ 
bering, that it is easier to die for chastity than to live 
with it; and the hangman could not extort a consent from 
some persons, from whom a lover would have entreated it. 
For the glory of chastity will easily overcome the rude¬ 
ness of fear and violence; but easiness, and softness, 
and smooth temptations, creep in, and, like the sun, make 
a maiden lay by her veil and robe, which persecution, 
like the northern wind, made her hold fast and clap close 
about her. 

6. He that will secure his chastity, must first cure his 
pride and his rage. For oftentimes lust is the punishment 
of a proud man, to tame the vanity of his pride by the 
shame and affronts of unchastity : and the same intempe¬ 
rate heat that makes anger, does enkindle lust. 

7. If thou beest assaulted with an unclean spirit, trust 
not thyself alone ; but run forth into company whose 
reverence and modesty may suppress, or whose society 
may divert thy thoughts: and a perpetual witness of thy 
conversation is of especial use against this vice, which 
evaporates in the open air, like camphire, being impatient 
of light and witnesses. 

8. Use frequent and earnest prayers to the King of pu¬ 
rities, the first of virgins, the eternal God, who is of an 
essential purity, that he would be pleased to reprove and 
cast out the unclean spirit. For, besides the blessings of 
prayer by way of reward, it hath a natural virtue to re 


OF HUMILITY. 


73 


strain this vice : because a prayer against it is an unwill¬ 
ingness to act it; and so long as we heartily pray against 
it, our desires are secured, and then this devil hath no 
power. This was St. Paul’s other remedy: “For this 
cause I besought the Lord thrice.” And there is much 
reason and much advantage in the use of this instrument ; 
because the main thing, that in this affair is to be secured, 
is a man’s mind. He that goes about to cure lust by 
bodily exercises alone (as St. Paul’s phrase is) or morti¬ 
fications, shall find them sometimes instrumental to it, 
and incitations of sudden desires, but always insufficient 
and of little profit: but he that hath a chaste mind, shall 
find his body apt enough to take laws; and let it do its 
worst, it cannot make a sin, and in its greatest violence 
can but produce a little natural uneasiness, not so much 
trouble as a severe fasting-day, or a hard night’s lodging 
upon boards. If a man be hungry, he must eat; and if he 
be thirsty, he must drink in some convenient time, or else 
he dies ; but if the body be rebellious, so the mind be 
chaste, let it do its worst; if you resolve perfectly not to 
satisfy it, you can receive no great evil by it. Therefore, 
the proper cure is by applications to the spirit, and secu¬ 
rities of the mind, which can no way so well be secured as 
by frequent and fervent prayers, and sober resolutions, and 
severe discourses. Therefore, 

9. Hither bring in succour from consideration of the Di¬ 
vine presence, and of his holy angels, meditation of death, 
and the passions of Christ upon the cross, imitation of his 
purities, and of the Virgin Mary his unspotted and holy mo¬ 
ther, and of such eminent saints, who, in their generations, 
were burning and shining lights, unmingled with such un¬ 
cleannesses, which defile the soul, and who now follow the 
Lamb, whithersoever he goes. 

10. These remedies are of universal efficacy in all cases 
extraordinary and violent; but in ordinary and common, the 
remedy, which God hath provided, that is, honourable mar¬ 
riage, hath a natural efficacy, besides a virtue by divine 
blessing, to cure the inconveniences, which otherwise 
might afflict persons temperate and sober. 

SECTION IV. 

Of Humility. 

Humility is the great ornament and jewel of Christian 

I 


OF HUMILITY. 


n 

-eligion; that, whereby it is distinguished from all the wis« 
dom of the world: it not having been taught by the wise 
men of the Gentiles, but first put into a disciple, and 
made part of a religion, by our Lord Jesus Christ, who pro¬ 
pounded himself imitable by his disciples so signally in no 
thing, as in the twin-sisters of meekness and humility. Learn 
of me, for I am meek and humble ; and ye shall find rest 
unto your souls. 

For all the world, all that we are, and all that we have, 
our bodies and our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our 
conditions at home, our accidents abroad, our many sins and 
our seldom virtues, are as so many arguments to make our 
souls dwell low in the deep valleys of humility. 

Arguments against Pride by way of consideration . 

1. Our body is weak and impure, sending out more un¬ 
cleannesses from its several sinks than could be endured, 
if they were not necessary and natural: and we are forced to 
pass that through our mouths, which as soon as we see upon 
the ground, we loathe like rottenness and vomiting. 

2. Our strength is inferior to that of many beasts, and our 
infirmities so many, that we are forced to dress and tend 
horses and asses, that they may help our needs, and relieve 
our wants. 

3. Our beauty is in colour inferior to many flowers, and 
in proportion of parts it is no better than nothing; for even 
a dog hath parts as well proportioned and fitted to his pur¬ 
poses, and the designs of his nature, as we have; and when 
it is most florid and gay, three fits of an ague can change it 
into yellowness and leanness, and the hollowness and wrin 
kies of deformity. 

4. Our learning is then best, when it teaches most humi¬ 
lity ; but to be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance 
in the world. For bur learning is so long in getting, and 
so very imperfect, that the greatest clerk knows not the 
thousandth part of what he is ignorant; and knows so 
uncertainly what he seems to know, and knows no other¬ 
wise than a fool or a child, even what is told him or what 
he guesses at, that except those things which concern his 
duty, and which God hath revealed to him, which also, 
every woman knows as far as is necessary, the most learned 
man hath nothing to be proud of, unless this be a sufficient 
argument to exalt him, that he uncertainly guesses at 


OF HUMILITY. 


75 


some more unnecessary thing than many others, who yet 
know all that concerns them, and mind other things more 
necessary for the needs of life and commonwealths. 

5. He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he be 
exalted above his neighbours, because he hath more gold, 
how much inferior is he to a gold mine ? How much is he 
to give place to a chain of pearl, or a knot of diamonds? 
For certainly that hath the greatest excellence, from 
whence he derives all his gallantry and pre-eminence over 
his neighbours. 

6. If a man be exalted by reason of any excellence in 
his soul, he may please to remember, that all souls are 
equal; and their differing operations are because their in¬ 
strument is in better tune, their body is more healthful, or 
better tempered: which is no more praise to him, than it is 
that he was born in Italy. 

7. He that is proud of his birth, is proud of the bless¬ 
ings of others, not of himself: for if his parents were 
more eminent in any circumstances than their neighbours, 
he is to thank God, and to rejoice in them; but still he 
may be a fool, or unfortunate, or deformed; and when 
himself was born, it was indifferent to him, whether his 
father were a king or a peasant, for he knew not any thing, 
nor chose any thing; and most commonly it is true, that 
he that boasts of his ancestors, who were the founders and 
raisers of a noble family, doth confess that he hath in him¬ 
self a less virtue and a less honour, and therefore that he is 
degenerated. 

8. Whatsoever other difference there is between thee 
and thy neighbour, if it be bad, it is thine own, but thou 
hast no reason to boast of thy misery and shame ; if it be 
good, thou hast received it from God ; and theqftfhou art 
more obliged to pay duty and tribute, use and principal to 
him; and it were a strange folly for a man to be proud of 
being more in debt than another. 

9. Remember what thou wert, before thou wert begot¬ 
ten. Nothing. What wert thou in the first regions of thy 
dwelling, before thy birth ? Uncleanness. What wert thou 
for many years after? Weakness. What-in all thy life? 
A great sinner. What in all thy excellence ? A mere 
debtor to God, to thy parents, to the earth, to all the crea¬ 
tures. But w r e may, if we please, use the method of the 
Platonists, who reduce all the causes and arguments for 


76 


OF HUMILITY. 


humility, which we can take from ourselves, to these seven 
heads. 1. The spirit of a man is light and troublesome. 

2. His body is brutish and sickly. 3. He is constant in 
his folly and error, and inconstant in his manners and 
good purposes. 4. His labours are vain, intricate, and 
endless. 5. His fortune is changeable, but seldom pleas¬ 
ing, never perfect. 6. His wisdom comes not, till he be 
ready to die, that is, till he be past using it. 7. His death 
is certain, always ready at the door, but never far off. 
Upon these or the like meditations if we dwell, or fre¬ 
quently retire to them, we shall see nothing more reason¬ 
able than to be humble, and nothing more foolish than to 
be proud. 

Acts or Offices of Humility. 

The grace of humility is exercised by these following 
rules. 

1. Think not thyself better for any thing, that happens 
to thee from without. For although thou mayest, by gifts 
bestowed upon thee, be better than another, as one horse 
is better than another, that is of more use to others; yet 
as thou art a man, thou hast nothing to commend thee to 
thyself but that only, by which thou art a man, that is, by 
what thou choosest and refusest. 

2. Humility consists not in railing against thyself, or 
wearing mean clothes, or going softly and submissively : 
but in hearty and real evil or mean opinion of thyself. Be¬ 
lieve thyself an unworthy person, heartily, as thou believest 
thyself to be hungry, or poor, or sick, when thou art so. 

3. Whatsoever evil thou sayest of thyself, be content 
that others should think to be true : and if thou callest 
thyself fool, be not angry, if another say so of thee. For 
if thou H^inkest so truly, all men in the world desire other 
men to be of their opinion ; and he is an hypocrite, that 
accuses himself before others, with an intent not to be be¬ 
lieved. But he that calls himself intemperate, foolish, 
lustful, and is angry when his neighbours call him so, is 
both a false and a proud person. 

4. Love to be concealed, and little esteemed : be con¬ 
tent to want praise, never being troubled when thou art 
slighted or undervalued ; for thou canst not undervalue 
thyself, and if thou thinkest so meanly, as there is reason, 
no contempt will seem unreasonable, and therefore it will 
be very tolerable. 


OF HUMILITY. 


77 

5. Never be ashamed of thy birth, or thy parents, or thy 
trade, or thy present employment, for the meanness or 
poverty of any of them ; and when there is an occasion to 
speak of them, such an occasion as would invite you to 
speak of any thing that pleases you, omit it not, but speak 
as readily and indifferently of thy meanness as of thy great- 
ness. Primislaus, the first king of Bohemia, kept his coun¬ 
try-shoes always by him, to remember from whence he was 
rrised: and Agathocles, by the furniture of his table, con¬ 
fessed, that, from a potter, he was raised to be the king of 
Sicily. 

6. Never speak any thing directly tending to thy praise or 
glory; that is, with a purpose to be commended, and for no 
3ther end. If other ends be mingled with thy honour, as if 
the glory of God, or charity, or necessity, or any thing of 
prudence be thy end, you are not tied to omit your discourse 
or your design, that you may avoid praise, but pursue your 
end, though praise come along in the company. Only let 
not praise be the design. 

7. When thou hast said or done any thing, for which 
thou receivest praise or estimation, take it indifferently, and 
return it to God; reflecting upon him as the giver of the 
gift, or the blesser of the action, or the aid of the design : 
and give God thanks for making thee an instrument of his 
glory, or the benefit of others. 

8. Secure a good name to thyself by living virtuously and 
humbly ; but let this good name be nursed abroad, and 
never be brought home to look upon it: let others use it for 
their own advantage; let them speak of it if they please , 
but do not thou at all use it, but as an instrument to do God 
glory, and thy neighbour more advantage. Let thy face, like 
Moses’s, shine to others, but make no looking-glasses for 
thyself. 

9. Take no content in praise, when it is offered thee : but 
let thy rejoicing in God’s gift be allayed with fear, lest this 
good bring thee to evil. Use the praise, as you use your 
pleasure in eating and drinking: if it comes, make it do 
drudgery, let it serve other ends, and minister to necessities, 
and to caution, lest, by pride, you lose your just praise, which 
you have deserved; or else, by being praised unjustly, you 
receive shame into yourself with God and wise men. 

10. Use no stratagems and devices to get praise. Some 
use to inquire into the faults of their own actions or dis- 

I 2 


OF HUMILITY. 


78 

courses, on purpose to hear, that it was well clone or spoken, 
and without fault: others bring the matter into talk, or 
thrust themselves into company, and intimate and give oc¬ 
casion to be thought or spoken of. These men make a 
bait to persuade themselves to swallow the hook, till by 
drinking the waters of vanity they swell and burst. 

11. Make no suppletories to thyself, when thou art dis¬ 
graced or slighted, by pleasing thyself with supposing thou 
didst deserve praise, though they understood thee not, or 
enviously detracted from thee : neither do thou get to thy¬ 
self a private theatre and flatterers, in whose vain noises and 
fantastic praises thou mayest keep up thine own good opi¬ 
nion of thyself. 

12. Entertain no fancies of vanity and private whispers 
of this devil of pride : such as was that of Nebuchadnezzar; 
“ Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the ho¬ 
nour of my name, and the might of my majesty, and the 
power of my kingdom ?” Some fantastic spirits will walk 
alone, and dream waking of greatnesses, of palaces, of ex¬ 
cellent orations, full theatres, loud applauses, sudden ad¬ 
vancement, great fortunes, and so will spend an hour with 
imaginative pleasure; all their employment being nothing 
but fumes of pride, and secret indefinite desires and signi¬ 
fications of what their heart wishes. In this, although there 
is nothing of its own nature directly vicious, yet it is either 
an ill mother or an ill daughter, an ill sign or an ill effect; 
and therefore at no hand consisting with the safety and in¬ 
terests of humility. 

13. Suffer others to be praised in thy presence, and en 
tertain their good and glory with delight; but at no hand 
disparage them, or lessen the report, or make an objection 
and think not the advancement of thy brother is a lessening 
of thy worth. But this act is also to extend further. 

14. Be content that he should be employed, and thou laid 
by as unprofitable ; his sentence approved, thine rejected ; 
he be preferred, and thou fixed in a low employment. 

15. Never compare thysel: with others, unless it be to 
advance them and to depress thyself. To which purpose, 
we must be sure in some sense or other to think ourselves 
the worst in every company, where we come: one is more 
learned than I am, another is more prudent, a third more 
honourable, a fourth more chaste, or he is more charitable, 
or less proud. For the humble man observes their good, 


OF HUMILITY. 


7b 

And reflects only upon his own vileness ; or considers the 
many evils of himself certainly known to himself, and the 
ill of others but by uncertain report: or he considers, that 
the evils, done by another, are out of much infirmity or 
ignorance, but his own sins are against a clearer light; 
and if the other had so great helps, he would have done 
more good and less evil: or he remembers, that his old 
sins before his conversion were greater in the nature of the 
thing, or in certain circumstances, than the sins of other 
men. So St. Paul reckoned himself the chiefest of sinners, 
because formerly he had acted the chiefest sin of perse¬ 
cuting the church of God. But this rule is to be used with 
this caution: that though it be good always to think 
meanest of ourselves, yet it is not ever safe to speak it; 
because those circumstances and considerations which de¬ 
termine thy thoughts, are not known to others as to thy¬ 
self; and it may concern others, that they hear thee give 
God thanks for the graces he hath given thee. But if 
thou preservest thy thoughts and opinions of thyself truly 
humble, you may with more safety give God thanks in 
public for that good which cannot, or ought not to be con¬ 
cealed. 

. 16. Be not always ready to excuse every oversight, or 
indiscretion, or ill action: ljut if thou beest guilty of it, 
confess it plainly ; for virtue scorns a lie for its cover : but 
to hide a sin with it, is like a crust of leprosy drawn upon 
an ulcer. If thou beest not guilty (unless it be scandalous,) 
be not over earnest to remove it, but rather use it as an ar¬ 
gument to chastise all greatness of fancy and opinion in 
thyself; and accustom thyself to bear reproof patiently and 
contentedly, and the harsh words of thy enemies, as know¬ 
ing that the anger of an enemy is a better monitor, and 
represents our faults, or admonishes us of our duty with 
more heartiness, than the kindness does, or precious balms 
of a friend. 

17. Give God thanks for every weakness, deformity, and 
imperfection, and accept it as a favour and grace of God, 
and an instrument to resist pride, and nurse humility; ever 
remembering, that when God, by giving thee a crooked 
back, hath also made thy spirit stoop, or less vain, thou 
art more ready to enter the narrow gate of heaven, than 
by being straight, and standing upright, and thinking highly. 
Thus the apostles rejoiced in their infirmities, not moral, 


80 


OF HUMILITY. 


but natural and accidental, in their being beaten and whipt 
like slaves, in their nakedness and poverty. 

18. Upbraid no man’s weakness to him to discomfort 
him, neither report it to disparage him, neither delight to 
remember it to lessen him, or to set thyself above him. 
Be sure never to praise thyself, or to dispraise any man 
else, unless God’s glory or some holy end do hallow it. 
And it was noted to the praise of Cyrus, that among his 
equals in age, he would never play at any sport, or use any 
exercise, in which he knew himself more excellent than 
they : but in such, in which he was unskilful, he would 
make his challenges, lest he should shame them by his 
victory, and that himself might learn something of their 
skill, and do them civilities. 

19. Besides the foregoing parts and actions, humiAty 
teaches us to submit ourselves and all our faculties to God, 
“ to believe all things, to do all things, to suffer all things,” 
which his will enjoins us ; to be content in every estate or 
change, knowing we have deserved worse than the worst 
we feel; and (as Anytus said to Alcibiades) he hath taken 
but half, when he might have taken all: to adore his good¬ 
ness, to fear his greatness, to worship his eternal and in¬ 
finite excellences, and to submit ourselves to all our supe¬ 
riors, in all things, according to godliness, and to be meek 
and gentle in our conversation towards others. 

Now although, according to the nature of every grace, 
this begins as a gift, and is increased like a habit, that is, 
best by its own acts; yet besides the former acts and offi¬ 
ces of humility, there are certain other exercises and con¬ 
siderations, which are good helps and instruments for the 
procuring and increasing this grace, and the curing of pride. 

Means and Exercises for obtaining and increasing the 

Grace of Humility. 

1. Make confession of thy sins often to God; and con¬ 
sider what all that evil amounts to, which you then charge 
upon yourself. Look not upon them as scattered in the 
course of a long life; now, an intemperate anger, then, too 
full a meal; now idle talking, and another time, impa¬ 
tience : but unite them into one continued representation, 
and remember, that he whose life seems fair, by reason 
that his faults are scattered at large distances in the se¬ 
veral parts of his life, yet, if a.. his errors and follies were 


OF HUMILITY. 


Si 

articled against him, the man would seem vicious and mi- 
serable : and possibly this exercise, really applied upon thy 
spirit, may be useful. 

2. Remember that we usually disparage others upon 
slight grounds and little instances ; and towards them one 
fly is enough to spoil a whole box of ointment: and if a 
man be highly commended, we think him sufficiently les¬ 
sened, if we clap one sin of folly or infirmity into his ac¬ 
count. Let us, therefore, be just to ourselves, since we 
are so severe to others, and consider, that whatsoever good 
any one can think or say of us, we can tell him of hun¬ 
dreds of base, and unworthy, and foolish actions, any one 
of which were enough (we hope) to destroy another’s repu¬ 
tation : therefore, let so many be sufficient to destroy our 
over-high thoughts of ourselves. 

3. When our neighbour is cried up by public fame and 
popular noises, that we may disparage and lessen him, we 
cry out that the people is a herd of unlearned and igno¬ 
rant persons, ill judges, loud trumpets, but which never 
give certain sound : let us use the same art to humble our¬ 
selves, and never take delight and pleasure in public re¬ 
ports, and acclamations of assemblies, and please ourselves 
with their judgment, of whom, in other the like cases, we 
affirm that they are mad. 

4. We change our opinion of others, by their kindness 
or unkindness towards us. If he be my patron, and boun¬ 
teous, he is wise, he is noble, his faults are but warts, his 
virtues are mountainous; but if he proves unkind, or re¬ 
jects our importunate suit, then he is ill-natured, covetous, 
and his free meal is called gluttony : that which before we 
called civility, is now very drunkenness ; and all he speaks 
is flat and dull, and ignorant as a swine. This, indeed, is 
unjust towards others ; but a good instrument, if we turn 
the edge of it upon ourselves. We use ourselves ill, 
abusing ourselves with false principles, cheating ourselves 
with lies and pretences, stealing the choice and election 
from our wills, placing voluntary ignorance in our under¬ 
standings, denying the desires of the spirit, setting up a 
faction against every noble and just desire ; the least of 
which, because we should resent up to reviling the injurious 
person, it is but reason we should at least not flatter our¬ 
selves with fond and too kind opinions. 

5 Every day call to mind some one of thy foulest sins, 


S2 


OF HUMILITY. 


or the most shameful of thy disgraces, or the indiscreetesl 
of thy actions, or any thing that did then most trouble 
thee, and apply it to the present swelling of thy spirit and 
opinion, and it may help to allay it. 

6. Pray often for his grace, with all humility of gesture 
and passion of desire; and in thy devotion interpose many 
acts of humility, by way of confession and address to God, 
and reflection upon thyself. 

7. Avoid great offices and employments, and the noises 
of worldly honour. For in those states, many times so 
many ceremonies and circumstances will seem necessary, 
as will destroy the sobriety of thy thoughts. If the num¬ 
ber of thy servants be fewer, and their observances less, 
and their reverences less solemn, possibly they will seem 
less than thy dignity; and if they be so much and so many, 
it is likely they will be too big for thy spirit. And here 
be thou very careful, lest thou be abused by a pretence, 
that thou wouldst use thy great dignity as an opportunity 
of doing great good. For supposing it might be good for 
others, yet it is not good for thee ; they may have encou¬ 
ragement in noble things from thee, and, by the same in¬ 
strument, thou mayest thyself be tempted to pride and va¬ 
nity. And certain it is, God is as much glorified by thy 
example of humility in a low or temperate condition, as by 
thy bounty in a great and dangerous. 

8. Make no reflex acts upon thy own humility, nor upon 
any other grace, with which God hath enriched thy soul. 
For since God oftentimes hides from his saints and servants 
the sight of those excellent things, by which they shine to 
others (though the dark side of the lantern be towards 
themselves,) that he may secure the grace of humility; it 
is good that thou do so thyself: and if thou beholdest a 
grace of God in thee, remember to give him thanks for it, 
that thou mayest not boast in that, which is none of thy 
own: and consider how thou hast sullied it, by handling it 
with dirty fingers, with thy own imperfections, and with 
mixture of unhandsome circumstances. Spiritual pride is 
very dangerous, not only by reason it spoils so many graces, 
by which we drew nigh unto the kingdom of God, but also 
because it so frequently creeps upon the spirit of holy per¬ 
sons. For it is no wonder for a beggar to call himself 
poor, or a drunkard to confess that he is no sober person ; 
but fjr a holy person to be humble, for one whom all men 


OF HUMILITY. 


83 

esteem a saint, to fear lest himself become a devil, and to 
observe his own danger, and to discern his own infirmities, 
and make discovery of his bad adherences, is as hard as 
for a prince to submit himself to be guided by tutors, and 
make himself subject to discipline, like the meanest of his 
servants. 

9. Often meditate upon the effects of pride, on one side, 
and humility on the other. First, That pride is like a can¬ 
ker, and destroys the beauty of the fairest flowers, the most 
excellent gifts and graces; but humility crowns them all. 
Secondly, That pride is a great hinderance to the perceiving 
the things of God ;* and humility is an excellent prepara¬ 
tive and instrument of spiritual wisdom. Thirdly, That 
pride hinders the acceptation of our prayers; but “ humi¬ 
lity pierceth the clouds, and will not depart till the Most 
High shall regard.” Fourthly, That humility is but a 
speaking truth, and all pride is a lie. Fifthly, That humi¬ 
lity is the most certain way to real honour, and pride is 
ever affronted or despised. Sixthly, That pride turned 
Lucifer into a devil, and humility exalted the Son of God 
above every name, and placed him eternally at the right 
hand of his Father. Seventhly, That “ God resisteth the 
proud,”f professing open defiance and hostility against 
such persons; but “ giveth grace to the humblegrace 
and pardon, remedy and relief against misery and oppres¬ 
sion, content in all conditions, tranquillity of spirit, patience 
in afflictions, love abroad, peace at home, and utter freedom 
from contention, and the sin of censuring others, and the 
trouble of being censured themselves. For the humble 
man will not “judge his brother for the mote in his eye,” 
being more troubled at “ the beam in his own eye;” and is 
patient and glad to be reproved, because himself hath cast 
the first stone at himself, and therefore wonders not, that 
others are of his mind. 

10. Remember that the blessed Saviour of the world 
hath done more to prescribe, and transmit, and secure this 
grace, than any other his whole life being a great con¬ 
tinued example of humility, a vast descent from the glori¬ 
ous bosom of his Father to the womb of a poor maiden, to 
the form of a servant, to the miseries of a sinner, to a life 
of labour, to a state of poverty, to a death of malefactors, to 
the grave of death, and the intolerable calamities which we 

* Matt. xi. 25. t James iv. 6. * John xiii. 15. 


OF HUMILITY. 


64 

deserved; and it were a good design, and yet but reasona- 
ble, that we should be as humble in the midst of our greatest 
imperfections and basest sins, as Christ was in the midst of 
his fulness of the Spirit, great wisdom, perfect life, and most 
admirable virtues. 

11. Drive away all flatterers from thy company, and at no 
hand endure them; for he that endures himself so to be 
abused by another, is not only a fool for entertaining the 
mockery, but loves to have his own opinion of himself to be 
heightened and cherished. 

12. Never change thy employment for the sudden coming 
of another to thee ; but if modesty permits, or discretion, ap¬ 
pear to him that visits thee, the same that thou wert to God 
and thyself in thy privacy. But if thou wert walking or 
sleeping, or in any other innocent employment or retirement, 
snatch not up a book to seem studious, nor fall on tny knees 
to seem devout, nor alter any thing to make him believe 
thee better employed than thou wert. 

13. To the same purpose it is of great use, that he who 
would preserve his humility, should choose some spiritua.. 
person to whom he shall oblige himself to discover his very 
thoughts and fancies, every act of his and all his inter¬ 
course with others, in which there may be danger; that 
by such an openness of spirit he may expose every blast 
of vain-glory, every idle thought, to be chastened and les¬ 
sened by the rod of spiritual discipline : and he that shall 
find himself tied to confess every proud thought, every va¬ 
nity of his spirit, will also perceive they must not dwell with 
him, nar find any kindness from him: and besides this, the 
nature of pride is so shameful and unhandsome, that the 
very discovery of it is a huge mortification and means of 
suppressing it. A man would be ashamed to be told, that 
he inquires after the faults of his last oration or action on 
purpose to be commended: and therefore, when the man 
shall tell his spiritual guide the same shameful story of 
himself, it is very likely he will be humbled, and heartily 
ashamed of it. 

14. Let every man suppose what opinion he should 
have of one that should spend his time in playing with 
drum-sticks and cockle-shells, and that should wrangle all 
day long with a little boy for pins, or should study hard, 
and labour to cozen a child of his gauds ; and, who would 
run into a river, deep and dangerous* with a great burden 


OF HUMILITY. 


85 

upon his back, even then when he were told of the danger, 
and earnestly importuned not to do it ? and let him but 
change the instances and the person, and he shall find 
that he hath the same reason to think as bad of himself, who 
pursues trifles with earnestness, spending his time in vanity, 
and his “labour for that which profits not;” who knowing 
the laws of God, the rewards of virtue, the cursed conse¬ 
quents of sin, that it is an evil spirit that tempts him to it; a 
devil, one that hates him, that longs extremely to ruin him ; 
that it is his own destruction that he is then working; that 
the pleasures of his sin are base and brutish, unsatisfying 
in the enjoyment, soon over, shameful in their story, bitter 
in the memory, painful in the effect here, and intolerable 
hereafter, and for ever ; yet in despite of all this, he runs 
foolishly into his sin and his ruin, merely because he is a 
fool, and winks hard, and rushes violently like a horse into 
the battle, or like a madman to his death. He that can 
think great and good things of such a person, the next step 
may court the rack for an instrument of pleasure, and ad¬ 
mire a swine for wisdom, and go for counsel to the prodigal 
and trifling grasshopper. 

After the use of these and such-like instruments and con¬ 
siderations, if you would try, how your soul is grown, you 
shall know that humility, like the root of a goodly tree, is 
thrust very far into the ground, by these goodly fruits, which 
appear above ground. 

Signs of Humility. 

1. The humble man trusts not to his own discretion, 
but in matter of concernment relies rather upon the judg¬ 
ment o' his friends, counsellors, or spiritual guides. 2. 
He does not pertinaciously pursue the choice of his own 
will, but in all things lets God choose for him, and his su¬ 
periors in those things which concern them. 3. He does 
not murmur against commands. 4. He is not inquisitive into 
the reasonableness of indifferent and innocent commands, 
but believes their command to be reason enough in such 
cases to exact his obedience. 5. He lives according to a rule, 
and with compliance to public customs, without any affect¬ 
ation or singularity. 6. He is meek and indifferent in all ac¬ 
cidents and chances. 7. He patiently bears injuries. 8. He 
is always unsatisfied in his own conduct, resolutions, and 
counsels. 9. He is a great lover of good men, and a praiser 
of wise men, and a censujgr of no man. 10. He is modest 
K 


36 


OF MODESTY. 


in his speech, and reserved in his laughter. 11. He fears, 
when he hears himself commended, lest God make another 
judgment concerning his actions than men do. 12. He gives 
no pert or saucy answers, when he is reproved, whether 
justly or unjustly. 13. He loves to sit down in private, and, 
if he may, he refuses the temptation of offices and new ho¬ 
nours. 14. He is ingenuous, free, and open, in his actions 
and discourses. 15. He mends his fault, and gives thanks, 
when he is admonished. 16. He is ready to do good offices 
to the murderers of his fame, to his slanderers, backbiters, 
and detractors, as Christ washed the feet of Judas. 17. And 
is contented to be suspected of indiscretion, so before God 
he may be really innocent, and not offensive to his neigh¬ 
bour, nor wanting to his just and prudent interest. 

SECTION V. 

Of Modesty. 

Modesty is the appendage of sobriety, and is to chastity, 
to temperance, and to humility, as the fringes are to a gar¬ 
ment. It is a grace of God, that moderates the overactive¬ 
ness and curiosity of the mind, and orders the passions of 
the body and external actions, and is directly opposed to 
curiosity, to boldness, to indecency. The practice of mo¬ 
desty consists in these following rules. 

Acts and Duties of Modesty , as it is opposed to Curiosity . 

1. Inquire not into the secrets of God,* but be content 
to learn thy duty according to the quality of thy person or 
employment; that is, plainly, if thou beest not concerned 
in the conduct of others ; but if thou beest a teacher, learn 
it so, as may best enable thee to discharge thy office. God’s 
commandments were proclaimed to all the world; bift God’s 
counsels are to himself and to his secret ones, when they 
are admitted within the veil. 

2. Inquire not into the things which are too hard for 
thee, but learn modestly to know thy infirmities and abili¬ 
ties ; and raise not thy mind up to inquire into mysteries 
of state, or the secrets of government, or difficulties theo¬ 
logical, if thy employment really be, or thy understanding 
be judged to be, of a lower rank. 

3. Let us not inquire into the affairs of others that con¬ 
cern us not, but be busied within ourselves and our own 

* Eccles.. iii. ^ 22. 


OF MODESTY. 


87 

spheres; ever remembering that to pry into the actions or 
interests of other men not under our charge, may minister 
to pride, to tyranny, to uncharitableness, to trouble, but 
can never consist with modesty; unless where duty, or the 
mere intentions of charity and relation, do warrant it. 

4. Never listen at the doors or windows :* for besides 
that it contains in it danger and a snare, it is also an in¬ 
vading thy neighbour’s privacy, and a laying that open, 
which he therefore enclosed, that it might not be open. 
Never ask, what he carries covered so curiously ; for it is 
enough, that it is covered curiously. Hither also is reduci¬ 
ble, that we never open letters without public authority, or 
reasonably presumed leave, or great necessity, or charity. 

Every man hath in his own life sins enough, in his own 
mind trouble enough, in his own fortunes evils enough, 
and in performance of his offices failings more than enough, 
to entertain his own inquiry : so that curiosity after the 
affairs of others cannot be without envy and an evil mind. 
What is it to me, if my neighbour’s grandfather were a 
Syrian, ^r his grandmother illegitimate; or that another 
is indebted five thousand pounds, or whether his wife be 
expensive? But commonly curious persons, or (as the 
apostle’s phrase is) “ busy-bodies,” are not solicitous or in¬ 
quisitive into the beauty and order of a well-governed 
family, or after the virtues of an excellent person; but if 
there be any thing for which men keep locks and bars, 
and porters, things that blush to see the light, and either 
are shameful in manners, or private in nature, these things 
are their care and their business. But if great things will 
satisfy our inquiry, the course of the sun and moon, the 
spots in their faces, the firmament of heaven, and the sup¬ 
posed orbs, the ebbing and flowing of the sea, are work 
enough for us: or if this be not, let him tell me, whether 
the number of the stars be even or odd, and when they 
began to be so ; since some ages have discovered new 
stars, which the former knew not, but might have seen, if 
they had been where now they are fixed. If these be too 
troublesome, search lower, and tell me, why this turf this 
year brings forth a daisy, and the next year a plantain; 
why the apple bears his seed in his heart, and wheat bears 
it in his head ; let him tell, why a graft, taking nourish¬ 
ment from a crab-stock, shall have a fruit more noble than 

* Eccles. vii. 21. 


89 


OF MODESTY. 


its nurse and parent; let him say, why the best of oil is 
at the top, the best of wine in the middle, and the best of 
honey at the bottom, otherwise than it is iji some liquors 
that are thinner, and in some that are thicker. But these 
things are not such as please busy-bodies; they must feed 
upon tragedies, and stories of misfortunes, and crimes: 
and yet tell them ancient stories of the ravishment of chaste 
maidens, or the debauchment of nations, or the extreme 
poverty of learned persons, or the persecutions of the old 
saints, or the changes of government, and sad accidents 
happening in royal families amongst the Arsacidae, the 
Caesars, the Ptolemies, these were enough to scratch the 
itch of knowing sad stories ; but unless you tell them some¬ 
thing sad and new, something that is done within the 
bounds of their own knowledge or relation, it seems tedious 
and unsatisfying; which shows plainly, it is an evil spirit: 
envy and idleness married together, and begot curiosity. 
Therefore Plutarch rarely well compares curious and in¬ 
quisitive ears to the execrable gates of cities, out of which 
only malefactors, and hangmen, and tragedies pas^ nothing 
that is chaste or holy. If a physician should go from house 
to house unsent for, and inquire what woman hath a can¬ 
cer in her bowels, or what man hath a fistula in his cho- 
lic-gut, though he could pretend to cure it, he would be 
almost as unwelcome as the disease itself: and therefore 
it is inhuman to inquire after crimes and disasters without 
pretence of amending them, but only to discover them. We 
are not angry with searchers and publicans, when they look 
only on public merchandise ; but when they break open 
trunks, and pierce vessels, and unrip packs, and open sealed 
letters. 

Curiosity is the direct incontinency of the spirit; and 
adultery itself, in its principle, is many times nothing but 
curious inquisition after, and envying of, another man’s en¬ 
closed pleasures ; and there have been many, who refused 
fairer objects, that they might ravish an enclosed woman 
from her retirement and single possessor. But these inqui¬ 
sitions are seldom without danger, never without baseness : 
they are neither just, nor honest, nor delightful, and very 
often useless to the curious inquirer. For men stand upon 
their guards against them, as they secure their meat against 
harpies and cats, laying all their counsels and secrets out 
of their way; or as men clap thei* garments close about 


OF MODESTY. 


99 

them, when the searching and saucy winds should discover 
their nakedness ; as knowing, that what men willingly hear, 
they do willingl) speak of. Knock therefore at the door, 
before you enter upon your neighbour’s privacy ; and re¬ 
member, that there is no difference between entering into 
his house, and looking into it. 

Acts of Modesty as it is opposed to Boldness. 

1. Let us always bear about us such impressions of re¬ 
verence and fear of God as to tremble at his voice, to ex¬ 
press our apprehensions of his greatness in all great acci¬ 
dents, in popular judgments, loud thunders, tempests, 
earthquakes ; not only for fear of being smitten ourselves, 
or that we are concerned in the accident, but also that we 
may humble ourselves before his Almightiness, and express 
that infinite distance between his infiniteness and our weak¬ 
nesses, at such times especially, when he gives such visible 
arguments of it. He that is merry and airy at shore, when 
he sees a sad and a loud tempest on the sea; or dances 
briskly, when God thunders from heaven, regards not, when 
God speaks to all the world, but is possessed with a firm 
immodesty. 

2. Be reverent, modest, and reserved, in the presence of 
thy betters, giving to all according to their quality their 
titles of honour, keeping distance, speaking little, answering 
pertinently, not interposing without leave or reason, not an¬ 
swering to a question propounded to another ; and ever 
present to thy superiors the fairest side of thy discourse, of 
thy temper*of thy ceremony, as being ashamed to serve ex¬ 
cellent persons with unhandsome intercourse. 

3. Never lie before a king, or a great person, nor stand 
in a lie, when thou art accused; nor offer to justify, what 
is indeed a fault; but modestly be ashamed of it, ask par* 
don and make amends. 

4. Never boast of thy sin, but at least lay a veil upon 
thy nakedness and shame, and put thy hand before thine 
eyes, that thou mayest have this beginning of repentance, 
to believe thy sin to be thy shame. For he that blushes 
not at his crime, but adds shamelessness to his shame, hath 
no instrument left to restore him to the hopes of virtue. 

5. Be not confident and affirmative in an uncertain mat¬ 
ter, but report things modestly and temperately, according 
to the degree of that persuasion, which is, or ought to be 

k 2 


OF MODESTY. 


90 

begotten in thee by the efficacy of the authority, or the rea¬ 
son inducing thee. 

6. Pretend not to more knowledge than thou hast, but 
be content to seem ignorant where thou art, lest thou beest 
either brought to shame, or retirest into shamelessness.* 

Acts of Modesty as it is opposed to Indecency . 

1. In your prayers, in churches, and places of religion 
use reverent postures, great attention, grave ceremony, the 
lowest gestures of humility, remembering that we speak to 
God, in our reverence to whom we cannot possibly exceed; 
but that the expression of this reverence be according to 
law or custom, and the example of the most prudent and 
pious persons: that is, let it be the best in its kind to the 
best of essences. 

2. In all public meetings, private addresses, in dis¬ 
courses, in journeys, use those forms of salutation, rever¬ 
ence and decency, which the custom prescribes, and is 
usual amongst the most sober persons : giving honour to 
whom honour belongeth, taking place of none of thy bet¬ 
ters, and in all cases of question concerning civil precedency, 
giving it to any one that will take it, if it be only thy own 
right that is in question. 

3. Observe the proportion of affections in all meetings 
and to all persons; be not merry at a funeral, nor sad upon 
a festival; but rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep 
with them that weep. 

4. Abstain from wanton and dissolute laughter, petu¬ 
lant and uncomely jests, loud talking, jeering, «nd all such 
actions, which in civil account are called indecencies and 
incivilities. 

5. Towards your parents use all modesty of duty and 
humble carriage; towards them and all your kindred, be 
severe in the modesties of chastity ; ever fearing, lest the 
freedoms of natural kindness should enlarge into any 
neighbourhood of unhandsomeness. For all incestuous 
mixtures, and all circumstances and degrees towards it, are 
the highest violations of modesty in the world: for there¬ 
fore incest is grown to be so high a crime, especially in 
the last periods of the world, because it breaks that rever¬ 
ence, which the consent of all nations and the severity of 
human laws hath enjoined towards our parents and nearest 

* Eccles. iii. 22. 


OF MODESTY. 


91 

kindred, in imitation of that law which God gave to the 
Jews in prosecution of modesty in this instance. 

6. Be a curious observer of all those things, which are 
of good report, and are parts of public honesty.* For pub¬ 
lic fame, and the sentence of prudent and public persons, 
is the measure of good and evil in things indifferent: and 
charity requires us to comply with those fancies and affec¬ 
tions, which are agreeable to nature, or the analogy of 
virtue, or public laws, to old customs. It is against mo¬ 
desty for a woman to marry a second husband, as long as 
she bears a burden by the first; or to admit a second love, 
while her funeral tears are not wiped from her cheeks. It 
is against public honesty to do some lawful actions of pri¬ 
vacy in public theatres, and therefore in such cases retire¬ 
ment is a duty of modesty. 

7. Be grave, decent, and modest, in thy clothing and 
ornament: never let it be above thy condition, nor always 
equal to it, never light or amorous, discovering a nakedness 
through a thin veil, which thou pretendest to hide, never 
to lay a snare for a soul; but remember what becomes a 
Christian, professing holiness, chastity, and the discipline of 
the holy Jesus : and the first effect of this let your ser¬ 
vants feel by your gentleness and aptness to be pleased 
with their usual diligence and ordinary conduct. For the 
man or woman, that is dressed with anger and impatience, 
vears pride under their robes, and immodesty above. 

8. Hither also is to be reduced singular and affected 
walking, proud, nice, and ridiculous gestures of body, 
painting and lascivious dressings; all which together God 
reproves by the prophet, “The Lord saith, because the 
daughters of Sion are haughty, and walk with stretched- 
forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they 
go, and make a tinkling with their feet; therefore the Lord 
will smite her with a scab of the crown of the head, and 
will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments.”! 
And this duty of modesty, in this instance, is expressly 
enjoined to all Christian women by St. Paul, “ That wo¬ 
men adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefaced¬ 
ness and sobriety, not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearl, 
or costly array, but (which becometh women professing 
godliness) with good works.”! 

9. As those meats are to be avoided, which tempt our 

* Philip, iv. 8. t Isa. iii. 16—18. t 1 Tim. ii. 9. 


92 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


stomachs beyond our hunger; so also should prudent per¬ 
sons decline all such spectacles, relations, theatres, loud 
noises and outcries, which concern us not, and are besides 
our natural or moral interest. Our senses should not, 
like petulant and wanton girls, wander into markets and 
theatres without just employment; but when they are sent 
abroad by reason, return quickly with their errand, and 
remain modestly at home under their guide, till they be 
sent again. 

10. Let all persons be curious in observing modesty to¬ 
wards themselves, in the handsome treating their own body, 
and such as are in their power, whether living or dead. 
Against this rule, they offend, who expose to others their 
own, or pry into others’ nakedness beyond the limits of 
necessity, or where a leave is not made holy by a permis¬ 
sion from God. It is also said, that God was pleased to 
work a miracle about the body of Epiphanius, to reprove 
the immodest curiosity of an unconcerned person, who 
pried too near, when charitable people were composing it 
to the grave. In all these cases and particulars, although 
they seem little, yet our duty and concernment is not little. 
Concerning which I use the words of the son of Sirach, 
“ He that despiseth little things, shall perish by little and 
little.” 


SECTION VI. 


Of Contentedness in all Estates and Accidents . 

Virtues and discourses are, like friends, necessary in all 
fortunes-; but those are the best, which are friends in our 
sadnesses, and support us in our sorrows and sad acci¬ 
dents : and in this sense, no man that is virtuous, can be 
friendless ; nor hath any man reason to complain of the 
Divine Providence, or accuse the public disorder of things, 
or his own infelicity, since God hath appointed one re¬ 
medy for al the evils in the world, and that is a contented 
spirit: for tnis alone makes a man pass through fire, and 
not be scorched; through seas, and not be drowned ; 
through hunger and nakedness, and want nothing. For 
since all the evil in the world consists in the disagreeing 
between the object and the appetite, as when a man hath 
what he desires not, or desires what he hath not, or desires 
amiss : he that composes his spirit in the present accident 
hath variety of instances for his virtue, but none to tron 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


93 

ble him; because his desires enlarge not beyond his pre¬ 
sent fortune : and a wise man is placed in the variety of 
chances, lil>^3 the nave or centre of a wheel, in the midst 
of all the circumvolutions and changes of posture, without 
violence or change, save that it turns gently in compliance 
with its changed parts, and is indifferent, which part is up, 
and which is down ; for there is some virtue or other to be 
exercised, whatever happens, either patience or thanks¬ 
giving, love or fear, moderation or humility, charity or con¬ 
tentedness, and they are every one of them equally in order 
to his great end and immortal felicity : and beauty is not 
made by white or red, by black eyes and a round face, by 
a straight body and a smooth skin: but by a proportion to 
the fancy. No rules can make amiability; our minds and 
apprehensions make that; and so is our felicity: and we 
may be reconciled to poverty and a low fortune, if we suf¬ 
fer contentedness and the grace of God to make the pro¬ 
portions. For no man is poor, that does not think himself 
so: but if, in a full fortune, with impatience he desires 
more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition 
But because this grace of contentedness was the sum of all 
the old moral philosophy, and a great duty in Christianity, 
and of most universal use in the whole course of our lives, 
and the only instrument to ease the burdens of the world 
and the enmities of sad chances, it will not be amiss to 
press it by the proper arguments, by which God hath bound 
it upon our spirits, it being fastened by reason and reli¬ 
gion, by duty and interest, by necessity and conveniency, 
by example, and by the proposition of excellent rewards, 
no less than peace and felicity. 

1. Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion: it 
is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine 
Providence, which governs all the world, and hath so or¬ 
dered us in the administration of his great family. He 
were a strange fool, that should be angry, because dogs 
and sheep need no shoes, and yet himself is full of care to 
get some. God hath supplied those needs to them by 
natural provisions, and to thee by an artificial: for he hath 
given thee reason to learn a trade, or some means to make 
or buy them, so that it only differs in the manner of our 
provision; and which had you rather want, shoes or rea¬ 
son ? And my patron that hath given me a farm, is freer to 
me than if he gives a loaf ready baked. But, however, all 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


94 

these gifts come from him, and therefore it is fit he should 
dispense them as he pleases ; and if we murmur here, we 
may, at the next melancholy, be troubled, that^God did not 
make us to be angels or stars. For if that, which we are 
or have, do not content us, we may be troubled for every 
thing in the world, which is besides our being or our pos¬ 
sessions. 

God is the master of the scenes; we must not choose 
which part we shall act; it concerns us only to be careful 
that we do it well, always saying, “ If this please God, let 
it be as it is and we who pray, that God’s will may be 
done in earth, as it is in heaven, must remember, that the 
angels do whatsoever is commanded them, and go wher¬ 
ever they are sent, and refuse no circumstances: and if 
their employment be crossed by a higher degree, they sit 
down in peace and rejoice in the event; and when the 
angel of Judea could not prevail in behalf of the people 
committed to his charge,* because the angel of Persia op¬ 
posed it, he only told the story at the command of God, 
and was as content, and worshipped with as great an ec- 
stacy in his proportion, as the prevailing spirit. Do thou 
so likewise : keep the station, where God hath placed you, 
and you shall never long for things without, but sit at home 
feasting upon the Divine providence and thy own reason, 
by which we are taught, that it is necessary and reasonable 
to submit to God. 

For is not all the world God’s family ? Are not we his 
creatures ? Are we not as clay in the hand of the potter ? 
Do we not live upon his meat, and move by his strength, 
and do our work by his light ? Are we any thing, but what 
we are from him ? And shall there be a mutiny among the 
flocks and herds, because their Lord or their shepherd 
chooses their pastures, and suffers them not to wander into 
deserts and unknown ways? If we choose, we do it so fool¬ 
ishly, that we cannot like it long, and most commonly not 
at all : but God, who can do what he pleases, is wise to 
choose safely for us, affectionate to comply with our needs, 
and powerful to execute all his wise decrees. Here there¬ 
fore is the wisdom of the contented man, to let God choose 
for him : for when we have given up our wills to him, and 
stand in that station of the battle, where our great general 
hath placed us, our spirits must needs rest, while our con- 

*Dan. x. 13. 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


95 


ditions have, for their security, the power, the wisdom, and 
the charity of God. 

2. Contentedness, in all accidents, brings great peace 
of spirit, and is the great and only instrument of temporal 
felicity. It removes the sting from the accident, and makes 
a man not to depend upon chance, and the uncertain dis¬ 
positions of men for his well-being, but only on God and 
his own spirit. We ourselves make our fortunes good or 
bad; and when God lets loose a tyrant upon us, or a sick¬ 
ness, or scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we fear to die, or 
know not to be patient, or are proud, or covetous, then the 
calamity sits heavy on us. But if we know how to manage 
a noble principle, and fear not death so much as a dis¬ 
honest action, and think impatience a worse evil than a fever, 
and pride to be the biggest disgrace, and poverty to be in¬ 
finitely desirable before the torments of covetousness ; then 
we, who now think vice to be so easy, and make it so fa¬ 
miliar, and think the cure so impossible, shall quickly be 
of another mind, and reckon these accidents amongst things 
eligible. 

But no man can be happy that hath great hopes and 
great fears of things without, and events depending upon 
other men, or upon the chances of fortune. The rewards 
of virtue are certain, and our provisions for our natural 
support are certain ; or if we want meat till we die, then 
we die of that disease, and there are many worse than to 
die with an atrophy or consumption, or unapt and coarser 
nourishment. But he that suffers a transporting passion 
concerning things within the power of others, is free from 
sorrow and amazement no longer than his enemy shall 
give him leave ; and it is ten to one but he shall be smitten 
then and there, where it shall most trouble him : for so the 
adder teaches us where to strike, by her curious and fear¬ 
ful defending of her head. The old stoics, when you told 
them of a sad story would still answer, “ What is that to 
me ? —Yes, for the tyrant hath sentenced you also to prison. 
—Well, what is that ? He will put a chain upon my leg, 
but he cannot bind my soul.—No: but he will kill you.— 
Then I will die. If presently, let me go, that I may pre¬ 
sently be freer than himself: but if not till anon or to-mor¬ 
row, I will dine first, or sleep, or do what reason or nature 
calls for, as at other times.” This, in Gentile philosophy, 
is the same with the discourse of St. Paul, U I have learn- 


96 


OF CONTENTEDNESfe. 


ed in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. 1 
know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: 
every where and in all things I am instructed both how 
to be full and to be hungry ; both to abound and to suffer 
need.”*' 

We are in the world, like men playing at tables ; the 
chance is not in our power, but to play it is ; and when it 
is fallen, we must manage it as we can; and let nothing 
trouble us, but when we do a base action, or speak like a 
fool, or think wickedly: these things God hath put into 
our powers ; but concerning those things, which are 
wholly in the choice of another, they cannot fall under our 
deliberation, and therefore neither are they fit for our pas¬ 
sions. My fear may make me miserable, but it cannot 
prevent what another hath in his power and purpose : and 
prosperities can only be enjoyed by them, who fear not at all 
to lose them; since the amazement and passion concern¬ 
ing the future takes off all the pleasure of the present pos¬ 
session. Therefore, if thou hast lost thy land, do not also 
Jose thy constancy : and if thou must die a little sooner, yet 
do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to him that 
is content, and to a man nothing is miserable, unless it be 
unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his 
slave, unless he hath first enslaved himself to life and death, 
to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear : command these pas¬ 
sions, and you are freer than the Parthian kings. 

Instruments or Exercises to procure Contentedness . 

Upon the strength of these premises we may reduce this 
virtue to practice by its proper instruments first, and then 
by some more special considerations or arguments of con¬ 
tent. 

1. When any thing happens to our displeasure, let us 
endeavour to take off its trouble by turning it into spiritual 
or artificial advantage, and handle it on that side, in which 
it may be useful to the designs of reason. For there is 
nothing but hath a double handle, or at least we have two 
hands to apprehend it. When an enemy reproaches us, 
let us look on him as an impartial relator of our faults, for 
he will tell thee truer than thy fondest friend will; and 
thou mayest call them precious balms, though they break 
thy head, and forgive his anger, while thou makest use of 
* Phil. iv. 11, 12. 1 Tim. vi. 6. Heb. xiii. 5. 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


97 

the plainness of his declamation. “ The ox, when he is 
weary, treads surestand if there be nothing else in the 
disgrace, but that it makes us to walk warily, and tread sure 
for fear of our enemies, that is better than to be flattered 
into pride and carelessness. This is the charity of Chris¬ 
tian philosophy, which expounds the sense of the Divine 
providence fairly, and reconciles us to it by a charitable con¬ 
struction : and we may as well refuse all physic, if we con¬ 
sider it only as unpleasant in the taste; and we may find 
fault with the rich valleys of Thasus, because they are cir¬ 
cled by sharp mountains; but so also we may be in charity 
with every unpleasant accident, because, though it taste bit¬ 
ter, it is intended for health and medicine. 

If therefore thou fallest from thy employment in public, 
take sanctuary in an honest retirement, being indifferent 
to thy gain abroad, or thy safety at home. If thou art out 
of favour with thy prince, secure the favour of the King of 
kings, and then there is no harm come to thee. And when 
Zeno Citiensis lost all his goods in a storm, he retired to 
the studies of philosophy, to his short cloak, and a severe 
life, and gave thanks to fortune for his prosperous mis¬ 
chance. When the north wind blows hard, and it rains 
sadly, none but fools sit down in it and cry; wise people 
defend themselves against it with a warm garment, or a 
good fire and a dry roof. When a storm of a sad mis¬ 
chance beats upon our spirits, turn it into some advantage, 
by observing where it can serve another end, either of re¬ 
ligion or prudence, or more safety or less envy: it will 
turn into something that is good, if we list to make it so; 
at least it may make us weary of the world’s vanity, and 
take off our confidence from uncertain riches, and make 
our spirits to dwell in those regions, where content dwells 
essentially. If it does any good to our souls, it hath made 
more than sufficient recompense for all the temporal af¬ 
fliction. He that threw a stone at a dog, and hit his cruel 
step-mother, said, that although he intended it otherwise, 
yet the stone was not quite lost: and if we fail in the first 
design, if we bring it home to another equally to content 
us or more to profit us, then we have put our conditions 
past the power of chance; and this was called, in the old 
Greek comedy, “ a being revenged on fortune by becom¬ 
ing philosophers,” and turning the chance into reason or 
religion: for so a wise man shall overrule his stars, and 
L 


98 


OF GONTEJNTEDNESS. 


have a greater influence upon his own content, than all the 
constellations and planets of the firmament. 

2. Never compare thy condition with those above thee; 
but, to secure thy content, look upon those thousands, with 
whom thou wouldest not, for any interest, change thy for¬ 
tune and condition. A soldier must not think himself un- 
prosperous, if he be not successful as the son of Philip, or 
cannot grasp a fortune as big as the Roman empire. Be 
content, that thou art not lessened as was Pyrrhus; or if 
thou beest, that thou art not routed like Crassus: and 
when that comes to thee, it is a great prosperity, that thou 
art not caged and made a spectacle, like Bajazet, or thy 
eyes were not pulled out, like Zedekiah’s, or that thou 
wert not flayed alive, like Valentinian. If thou admirest 
the greatness of Xerxes, look also on those, that digged 
the mountain Atho, or whose ears and noses were cut off, 
because the Hellespont carried away the bridge. It is a 
fine thing (thou thinkest) to be carried on men’s shoulders; 
but give God thanks, that thou art not forced to carry a 
rich fool upon thy shoulders, as those poor men do, whom 
thou beholdest. There are but a few kings in mankind; but 
many thousands who are very miserable, if compared to thee. 
However, it is a huge folly rather to grieve for the good of 
others, than to rejoice for that good, which God hath given 
us of our own. 

And yet there is no wise or good man, that would change 
persons or conditions entirely with any man in the world. 
It may be, he would have one man’s wealth added to him¬ 
self, or the power of a second, or the learning of a third; 
but still he would receive these into his own person, be¬ 
cause he loves that best, and therefore esteems it best, and 
therefore overvalues all that which he is, before all that 
which any other man in the world can be. Would any 
man be Dives, to have his wealth, or Judas for his office, 
or Saul for his kingdom, or Absalom for his bounty, or 
Achitophel for his policy? It is likely he would wish all 
these, and yet he would be the same person still. For 
every man hath desires of his own, and objects just fitted 
to them, without which he cannot be, unless he were not 
himself. And let every man, that loves himself so well as 
to love himself before all the world, consider, if he have 
not something, for which in the whole he values himself 
far'more than he can value any man else. There is there- 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


99 

fore no reason to take the finest feathers from all the 
winged nation to deck that bird, that thinks already she is 
more valuable than any of the inhabitants of the air. 
Either change all or none. Cease to love yourself best, 
or be content with that portion of being and blessing, for 
which you love yourself so well. 

3. It conduces much to our content, if we pass by those 
things, which happen to our trouble, and consider that 
which is pleasing and prosperous, that by the represent¬ 
ation of the better, the worse may be blotted out: and, at 
the worst, you have enough to keep you alive, and to keep 
up and to improve your hopes of heaven. If I be overthrown 
in my suit at law, yet my house is left me still, and my land ; 
or I have a virtuous wife, or hopeful children, or kind friends, 
or good hopes. If I have lost one child, it may be I have 
two or three still left me. Or else reckon the blessings, 
which already you have received, and therefore be pleased, 
in the change and variety of affairs, to receive evil from the 
hand of God as well as good. Antipater of Tarsus used 
this art to support his sorrows on his death-bed, and 
reckoned the good things of his past life, not forgetting to 
recount it as a blessing, an argument that God took care * 
of him, that he had a prosperous journey from Cecilia to 
Athens. Or else please thyself with hopes of the future: 
for we were born with this sadness upon'us; and it was a 
change that brought us into it, and a change may bring 
us out again. Harvest will come, and then every farmer 
is rich, at least for a month or two. It may be thou art 
entered into the cloud, which will bring a gentle shower 
to refresh thy sorrows. 

Now suppose thyself in as great a sadness as ever did 
load thy spirit, wouldst thou not bear it cheerfully and 
nobly, if thou wert sure that within a certain space some 
strange excellent fortune would relieve thee, and enrich 
thee, and recompense thee, so as to overflow all thy hopes 
and thy desires and capacities 1 Now then, when a sad¬ 
ness lies heavy upon thee, remember that thou art a 
Christian designed to the inheritance of Jesus: and what 
dost thou think concerning thy great fortune, thy lot, and 
portion of eternity ? Dost thou think, thou shalt be saved or 
damned ? Indeed if thou thinkest thou shalt perish, I cannot 
blame thee to be sad, sad till thy heart-strings crack: but 
then why art thou troubled at the loss of thy money 1 Whaf 


100 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


should a damned man do with money, which in so great a 
sadness it is impossible for him to enjoy ? Did ever any 
man upon the rack afflict himself because he had received 
a cross answer from his mistress ? or call for the particu¬ 
lars of a purchase upon the gallows ? If thou dost really 
believe thou shalt be damned, I do not say, it will cure 
the sadness of thy poverty, but it will swallow it up. But 
if thou believest thou shalt be saved, consider, how great 
is that joy, how infinite is that change, how unspeakable is 
the glory, how excellent is the recompense, for all the suf¬ 
ferings in the world, if they were all laden upon the spirit? 
So that, let thy condition be what it will, if thou considerest 
thy own present condition, and comparest it to thy future 
possibility, thou canst not feel the present smart of a cross 
fortune to any great degree, either because thou hast a far 
bigger sorrow, or a far bigger joy. Here thou art but a 
stranger travelling to thy country, where the glories of a 
kingdom are prepared for thee ; it is therefore a huge folly 
to be much afflicted, because thou hast a less convenient 
inn to lodge in by the way. 

But these arts of looking backwards and forwards are 
• more than enough to support the spirit of a Christian : 
there is no man, but hath blessings enough in present pos¬ 
session to outweigh the evils of great affliction. Tell the 
joints of thy body, and do not accuse the universal Provi¬ 
dence for a lame leg, or the want of a finger, when all the 
rest is perfect, and you have a noble soul, a particle of di¬ 
vinity, the image of God himself; and, by the want of a 
finger, you may the better know how to estimate the re¬ 
maining parts, and to account for every degree "of the sur¬ 
viving blessings. Aristippus, in a great suit at law, lost a 
farm, and to a gentleman, who in civility pitied and deplored 
his loss, he answered, “ I have two farms left still, and that 
is more than I have lost, and more than you have by one.” 
If you miss an office, for which you stood candidate, then, 
besides that you are quit of the cares and the envy of it, 
you still have all those excellencies, which rendered you 
capable to receive it, and they are better than the best 
office in the commonwealth. If your estate be lessened, 
you need the less to care who governs the province, whe¬ 
ther he be rude or gentle. I am crossed in my journey, 
and yet I escape robbers; and I consider, that if I had 
been set upon by villains, I would have redeemed that evil 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


101 


by this which I now suffer, and have counted it a deliver¬ 
ance : or if I did fall into the hands of thieves, yet they 
did not steal my land. Or, I am fallen into the hands of 
publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from 
me : what now ? let me look about me. They have left 
me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and 
many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can 
still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not taken 
away my merry countenance, and my cheerful spirit, and 
a good conscience : they still have left me the providence 
of God, and all the promises of the gospel, and my reli¬ 
gion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them too; 
and still I sleep and digest, I .eat and drink, I read and 
meditate, I can walk in my neighbour’s pleasant fields, and 
see the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that 
in which God delights, that is, in virtue and wfsdom, in the 
whole creation, and in God himself. And he that hath so 
many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with 
sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and 
chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. Such 
a person were fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sor¬ 
row for the loss of one of Poppea’s hairs, or help to mourn 
for Lesbia’s sparrow : and because he loves it, he deserves 
to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort, while 
tie is encircled with blessings. 



4. Enjoy the present, whatsoever it be, and be not soli¬ 
citous for the future : for if you take your foot from the 
present standing, and thrust it forward towards to-mor¬ 
row’s event, you are in a restless condition : it is like re¬ 
fusing to quench your present thirst, by fearing you shall 
want drink the next day. If it be well to-day, it is mad¬ 
ness to make the present miserable, by fearing it may be 
ill to-morrow; when your belly is full of to-day’s dinner, 
to fear you shall want the next day’s supper : for it may be 
you shall not, and then to what purpose was this day’s af¬ 
fliction? But if to-morrow you shall want, your sorrow 
will come time enough, though you do not hasten it: let 
your trouble tarry, till its own day comes. But if it chance 
to be ill to-day, do not increase it by the care of to-morrow. 
Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them, and 
the evils of it bear patiently and sweetly; for this day is 
only ours; we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet 
born to the morrow. He, therefore, that enjoys the pre- 


l 2 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


102 

sent, if it be good, enjoys as much as is possible ; and if only 
that day’s trouble leans upon him, it is singular and finite. 
“ Sufficient to the day (said Christ) is the evil thereof 
sufficient, but not intolerable. B’ut if we look abroad 
and bring into one day’s thoughts the evil of many, certain 
and uncertain, what will be, and what will never be, our 
load will be as intolerable as it is unreasonable. To re¬ 
prove this instrument of discontent, the ancients feigned 
that in hell stood a man twisting a rope of hay; and still 
he twisted on, suffering an ass to eat up all that was 
finished: so miserable is he, who thrusts his passions for¬ 
wards towards future events, and suffers all, that he may 
enjoy, to be lost and devoured by folly and inconsideration, 
thinking nothing fit to be enjoyed, but that which is not, or 
cannot be had. Just so, many young persons are loath to 
die, and therefore desire to live to old age; and when they 
are come thither, are troubled, that they are come to that 
state of life, to which, before they were come, they were 
hugely afraid they should never come. 

5. Let us prepare our minds against changes, always ex¬ 
pecting them, that we be not surprised when they come ; 
for nothing is so great an enemy to tranquillity and a con¬ 
tented spirit, as the amazement and confusions of unreadi¬ 
ness and inconsideration; and when our fortunes are vio¬ 
lently changed, our spirits are unchanged, if they always 
stood in the suburbs and expectation of sorrows. “ O 
death, how bitter art thou to a man, that is at rest in his 
possessions !” And to the rich man, who had promised to 
himself ease and fulness for many years, it was a sad arrest 
that his soul was surprised the first night; but the apos¬ 
tles, who every day knocked at the gate of death, and 
looked upon it continually, went to their martyrdom in 
peace and evenness. 

6. Let us often frame to ourselves, and represent to our 
considerations, the images of those blessings we have, just 
as we usually understand them, when we want them. Con¬ 
sider how desirable health is to a sick man, or liberty to a 
prisoner; and if but a fit of the tooth-ache seizes us with 
violence, all those troubles, which in our health afflicted us, 
disband instantly, and seem inconsiderable. He that is in 
his health is troubled that he is in debt, and spends sleepless 
nights, and refuses meat because of his infelicity, let him 
fall into a fit of the stone or a high fever, he despises the 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


103 


arrest of all his first troubles, and is as a man unconcerned. 
Remember then, that God hath given thee a blessing, the 
want of which is infinitely more trouble than thy present 
debt or poverty or loss; and therefore is now more to be 
valued in the possession, and ought to outweigh thy trou¬ 
ble. The very privative blessings, the blessings of immu¬ 
nity, safeguard, liberty, and integrity, which we commonly 
enjoy, deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life. If God 
should send a cancer upon thy face, or a wolf into thy 
side, if he should spread a crust of leprosy upon thy skin, 
what wouldst thou give to be but as now thou art ? 
Wouldst thou not, on that condition, be as poor as I am, 
or as the meanest of thy brethren? Would you not choose 
your present loss or affliction as a thing extremely eligible, 
and a redemption to thee, if thou mightest exchange the 
other for this ? Thou art quit from a thousand calamities, 
every one of which, if it were upon thee, would make thee 
insensible of thy present sorrow; ,and therefore let thy 
joy (which should be as great for thy freedom from them, 
as is thy sadness when thou feelest any of them) do the 
same cure upon thy discontent. For if we be not extremely 
foolish or vain, thankless or senseless, a great joy is more 
apt to cure sorrow and discontent than a great trouble is. 
I have known an affectionate wife, when she had been in 
fear of parting with her beloved husband, heartily desire 
of God his life or society upon any conditions that were 
not sinful; and choose to beg with him rather than to feast 
without him : and the same person hath, upon that con¬ 
sideration, borne poverty nobly, when God hath heard her 
prayer in the other matter. What wise man in the world 
is there who does not prefer a small fortune with peace, 
before a great one with contention, and war, and violence ? 
And then he is no longer wise, if he alters his opinion when 
he hath his wish. 

7. If you will secure a contented spirit, you must mea¬ 
sure your desires by your fortune and condition, not your 
fortunes by your desires; that is, be governed by your 
needs, not by your fancy; by nature, not by evil customs 
and ambitious principles. He that would shoot an arrow 
out of a plough, or hunt a hare with an elephant, is not un¬ 
fortunate for missing the mark or prey; but he is foolish 
for choosing such unapt instruments ; and so is he, that runs 
after his content with appetites not springing from natural 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


104 

needs, but from artificial, fantastical, and violent necessi¬ 
ties. These are not to be satisfied ; or, if they were, a man 
hath chosen an evil instrument towards his content; na¬ 
ture did not intend rest to a man by filling of such desires. 
Is that beast better, that hath two or three mountains to 
graze on, than a little bee that feeds on dew or manna, and 
lives upon what falls every morning from the storehouses 
of heaven, clouds and Providence ? Can a man quench his 
thirst better out of a river than a full urn, or drink better 
from the fountain, when it is finely paved with marble, 
than when it swells over the green turf? Pride and arti¬ 
ficial gluttonies do but adulterate nature, making our diet 
healthless, our appetites impatient and unsatisfiable, and 
the taste mixed, fantastic, and meretricious. But that 
which we miscall poverty, is indeed nature ; and its pro¬ 
portions are the just measures of a man, and the best in¬ 
struments of content. But when we create needs that God 
or nature never made, we have erected to ourselves an in¬ 
finite stock of trouble, that can have no period. Sempro- 
nius complained of want of clothes, and was much trou¬ 
bled for a new suit, being ashamed to appear in the thea¬ 
tre with his gown a little threadbare ; but when he got it, 
and gave his old clothes to Codrus, the poor man was ra¬ 
vished with joy, and went and gave God thanks for his 
new purchase ; and Codrus was made richly fine and cheer¬ 
fully warm by that which Sempronius was ashamed to 
wear ; and yet their natural needs were both alike ; the 
difference only was, that Sempronius had some artificial 
and fantastical necessities superinduced, which Codrus had 
not; and was harder to be relieved, and could not have 
joy at so cheap a rate ; because he only lived according 
to nature, the other by pride and ill customs, and measures 
taken by other men’s eyes and tongues, and artificial needs. 
He that propounds to his fancy things greater than himself 
or his needs, and is discontent and troubled, when he fails 
of such purchases, ought not to accuse Providence, or blame 
his fortune, but his folly. God and nature made no more 
needs than they mean to satisfy; and he that will make more, 
must look for satisfaction when he can. 

8. In all troubles and sadder accidents let us take sanc¬ 
tuary in religion, and by innocence cast out anchors for 
our souls to keep them from shipwreck, though they be not 
kept from storm. For what philosophy shall comfort a 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


105 

villain that is haled to the rack for murdering his prince, or 
that is broken upon the wheel for sacrilege? His cup is full 
of pure and unmingled sorrow: his body is rent with tor¬ 
ments, his name with ignominy, his soul with shame and sor¬ 
row, which are to last eternally. But when a man suffers in 
a good cause, or is afflicted, and yet walks not perversely 
with his God, then “ Anytus and Melitus may kill me, but 
they cannot hurt me then St. Paul’s character is engraven 
in the forehead of our fortune;* “ We are troubled on every 
side, but not distressed ; perplexed, but not in despair; per¬ 
secuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. 
And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that 
which is good ?”f For indeed every thing in the world is 
indifferent but sin; and all the scorchings of the sun are 
very tolerable in respect of the burnings of a fever or a ca¬ 
lenture. The greatest evils are from within us: and from 
ourselves also we must look for our greatest good; for 
God is the fountain of it, but reaches it to us by our own 
hands; and when all things look sadly around about us, 
then only we shall find, how excellent a fortune it is to 
have God to our friend ; and of all friendships, that only 
is created to support us in our needs. For it is sin that 
turns an ague into a fever, and a fever to the plague, fear 
into despair, anger into rage, and loss into madness, and 
sorrow to amazement and confusion; but if either we were 
innocent, or else, by the sadness, are made penitent, we 
are put to school, or into the theatre, either to learn how, 
or else actually to combat for a crown; the accident may 
serve an end of mercy, but is not a messenger of wrath. 

Let us therefore be governed by external, and present, 
and seeming things; nor let us make the same judgment 
of things that common and weak understandings do; nor 
make other men, and they not the wisest, to be judges of 
our felicity so that we be happy or miserable, as they 
please to think us : but let reason, and experience, and re¬ 
ligion, and hope relying upon the divine promises, be the 
measure of our judgment. No wise man did ever describe 
felicity without virtue; and no good man did ever think 
virtue could depend upon the variety of good or bad for¬ 
tune. It is no evil to be poor, but to be vicious and im¬ 
patient. 

* 2 Cor. iv. 8, 9. 


11 Pet in. 13; iv. 15,16. 


106 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


Means to obtain Content by icay of consideration, 

TV these exercises and spiritual instruments, if we add 
the following considerations concerning the nature and cir¬ 
cumstance of human chance, we may better secure our 
peace. For as to the children who are afraid of vain 
images, we use to persuade confidence by making them to 
handle and look near such things, that when, in such a 
familiarity, they perceive them innocent, they may overcome 
their fears : so must timorous, fantastical, sad, and dis¬ 
contented persons be treated; they must be made to con¬ 
sider and on all sides to look upon the accident, and to 
take all its dimensions, and consider its consequences, and 
to behold the purpose of God, and the common mistakes 
of men, and their evil sentences they usually pass upon 
them. For then we shall perceive, that, like colts or un¬ 
managed horses, we start at dead bones and lifeless blocks 
things that are inactive as they are innocent. But if we 
secure our hopes and our fears, and make them moderate 
and within government, we may the sooner overcome the 
evil of the accident; for nothing that we feel is so bad as 
what we fear. 

Consider that the universal providence of God hath 
so ordered it, that the good things of nature and fortune 
are divided, that we may know how to bear our own, and 
relieve each other’s wants and imperfections. It is not 
for a man, but for a God, to have all excellencies and all 
felicities. He supports my poverty with his wealth: I 
counsel and instruct him with my learning and experience. 
He hath many friends, I many children; he hath no heir, 
I have no inheritance; and any one great blessing, toge¬ 
ther with the common portions of nature and necessity, is 
a fair fortune, if it be but health or strength, or the swift¬ 
ness of Ahimaaz. For it is an unreasonable discontent to 
be troubled, that I have not so good cocks or dogs or 
horses as my neighbour, being more troubled that I want 
one thing that I need not, than thankful for having received 
all that I need. Nero had this disease, that he was not con¬ 
tent with the fortune of the whole empire, but put the fiddlers 
to death for being more skilful in the trade than he was; and 
Dionysius the elder was so angry at Philoxenus for singing, 
and with Plato for disputing better than he did, that he sold 
Plato a slave into iEgina, and condemned the other to the 
quarries. 


OF CONTENTEDNESS 


10? 

This consideration is to be enlarged, by adding to it, that 
there are some instances of fortune and a fair condition, 
that cannot stand with some others; but if you desire 
this, you must lose that, and unless you be content with 
one, you lose the comfort of both. If you covet learning, 
you must have leisure and a retired life*: if to be a politi¬ 
cian, you must go abroad and get experience, and do all 
businesses, and keep all company, and have no 'leisure at 
all. If you will be rich, you must be frugal: if you will 
be popular, you must be bountiful: if a philosopher, you 
must despise riches. The Greek that designed to make 
the most exquisite picture that could be imagined, fancied 
the eye of Chione, and the hair of Paegnium, and Tarsia’s 
lip, Philenium’s chin, and the forehead of Delphia, and set 
all these upon Milphidippa’s neck, and thought that he 
should outdo both art and nature. But when he came to 
view the proportions, he found, that what was excellent 
in Tarsia, did not agree with the other excellency of 
Philenium ; and although, singly, they were rare pieces, 
yet in the whole they made a most ugly face. The dis¬ 
persed excellencies and blessings of many men, if given to 
one, would not make a handsome, but a monstrous fortune. 
Use, therefore, that faculty which nature hath given thee, 
and thy education hath made actual, and thy calling hath 
made a duty. But if thou desirest to be a saint, refuse 
not his persecution : if thou wouldst be famous, as Epami- 
nondas or Fabricius, accept also of their poverty; for that 
added lustre to their persons, and envy to their fortune, and 
their virtue without it could not have been so excellent. 
Let Euphorion sleep quietly w ; th his old rich wife; and let 
Medius drink on with Alexander: and remember thou 
canst not havo riches of the first, unless you have the old 
wife too ; nor the favour which the second had with his 
prince, unless you buy it at his price, that is, lay thy sobri¬ 
ety down at first, and thy health a little after; and then 
their condition, though it look splendidly, yet when you 
handle it on all sides, it will prick your fingers. 

2. Consider, how many excellent personages in all ages 
have suffered as great or greater calamities than this which 
now tempts thee to impatience. Agis was the most noble 
of the Greeks, and yet his wife bore a child by Alcibiades: 
and Philip was prince of Ituraea, and yet his wife ran away 
with his brother Herod into Galilee; and certainly, in & 


108 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


great fortune, that was a great calamity. But these are 
but single instances. Almost all the ages of the world 
have noted, that their most eminent scholars were most 
eminently poor, some by choice, but most by chance, and 
an inevitable decree of Providence. And, in the whole 
sex of women, Go^l hath decreed the sharpest pains of 
child-birth, to show, that there is no state exempt from sor¬ 
row, and yet that the weakest persons have strength more 
than enough to bear the greatest evil: and the greater t 
queens, and the mothers of saints and apostles, have no 
charter of exemption from this sad sentence. But the Lord 
of men and angels was also the King of sufferings: and if 
thy coarse robe trouble thee, remember the swaddling- 
clothes of Jesus ; if thy bed be uneasy, yet it is not worse 
than his manger; and it is no sadness to have a thin 
table, if thou callest to mind, that the King of heaven and 
earth was fed with a little breastmilk; and yet, besides 
this, he suffered all the sorrows which we deserved. We 
therefore have great reason to sit down upon our own 
hearths, and warm ourselves at our own fires, and feed 
upon content at home : for it were a strange pride to ex¬ 
pect to be more gently treated by the divine Providence, 
than the best and wisest men, than apostles and saints, 
nay, the Son of the eternal God, the heir of both the 
worlds. 

This consideration may be enlarged, by surveying all 
the states and families of the world; and he that at once 
saw iEgina and Megara, Pyrseus and Corinth, lie gasping 
in their ruins, and almost buried in their own heaps, had 
reason to blame Cicero for mourning impatiently the death 
of one woman. In the most beauteous and splendid for¬ 
tune, there are many cares and proper interruptions and 
allays: in the fortune of a prince there is not the coarse 
robe of beggary ; but there are infinite cares ; and the 
judge sits upon the tribunal with great ceremony and os¬ 
tentation of fortune, and yet, at his house, or in his breast, 
there is something that causes him to sigh deeply. Pitta- 
cus was a wise and valiant man, but his wife overthrew the 
table when he had invited his friends ; upon which the 
good man, to excuse her incivility and his own misfortune, 
said, “ That every man had one evil, and he was most hap¬ 
py that had but that alone.” And if nothing else happens 
yet sicknesses so often do imbitter the fortune and con- 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


109 


tent of a family, that a physician, in a few years, and with 
the practice upon a very few families, gets experience 
enough to administer to almost all diseases. And when 
thy little misfortune troubles thee, remember that thou hast 
known the best of kings and the best of men put to death 
publicly by his own subjects. 

3. There are many accidents, which are esteemed great 
calamities, and yet we have reason enough to bear them 
well and unconcernedly ; for they neither touch our bodies 
nor our souls: our health and our virtue remain entire, our 
life and our reputation. It may be I am slighted, or I 
have received ill language ; but my head aches not for it, 
neither hath it broke my thigh, nor taken away my virtue, 
unless I lose my charity or my patience. Inquire, there¬ 
fore, what you are the worse, either in your soul or in your 
body, for what hath happened : for upon this very stock 
many evils will disappear, since the body and the soul 
make up the whole man. And when the daughter of Stilpo 
proved a wanton, he said it was none of his sin, and there¬ 
fore there was no reason it should be his misery. And if 
an enemy hath taken all that from a prince, whereby he 
was a king; he may refresh himself by considering all that 
is left him, whereby he is a man. 

4. Consider, that sad accidents and a state of affliction, 
is a school of virtue : it reduces our spirits to soberness, and 
our counsels to moderation: it corrects levity, and inter¬ 
rupts the confidence of sinning. “ It is good for me (said 
David) that I have been afflicted, for thereby I have learned 
thy law.”* And “ I know (O Lord) that thou of very faith¬ 
fulness hast caused me to be troubled.” For God, who, in 
mercy and wisdom, governs the world, would never have 
suffered so many sadnesses, and have sent them especially 
to the most virtuous and the wisest men, but that he intends 
they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of vir¬ 
tue, the exercise of wisdom, the trial of patience, the ven¬ 
turing for a crown, and the gate of glory. 

5. Consider, that afflictions are oftentimes the occasions of 
great temporal advantages ; and we must not look upon them 
as they set down heavily upon us, but as they serve some of 
God’s ends, and the purposes of universal Providence. And 
when a prince fights justly, and yet unprosperously, if he 

* Psal. cxix. part 10. ver. 3. 


M 


110 


OF COJNTENTEDNESS. 


could see all those reasons for which God had so ordered 
it, he would think it the most reasonable thing in the world, 
and that it would be very ill to have it otherwise. If a man 
could have opened one of the pages of the Divine counsel, 
and could have seen the event of Joseph’s being sold to 
the merchants of Amalek, he might, with much reason, 
have dried up the young man’s tears: and when God’s pur¬ 
poses are opened in the events of things, as it was in the 
case of Joseph, when he sustained his father’s family and 
became lord of Egypt, then we see, what ill judgment we 
made of things, and that we were passionate as children, and 
transported with sense and mistaken interest. The case of 
Themistocles was almost like that of Joseph ; for being ba¬ 
nished into Egypt, he also grew in favour with the king, 
and told his wife, “ he had beerf undone, unless he had been 
undone.” For God esteems it one of his glories, that he 
brings good out of evil; and therefore it were but reason, 
we should trust God to govern his own world as he pleases; 
and that we should patiently wait till the change cometh, 
or the reason be discovered. 

And this consideration is also of great use to them, who 
envy at the prosperity of the wicked, and the success of 
persecutors, and the baits of fishes, and the bread of 
dogs. God fails not to sow blessings in the long furrows, 
which the ploughers plough upon the back of the church: 
and this success, which troubles us, will be a great glory to 
God, and a great benefit to his saints and servants, and a 
great ruin to the persecutors, who shall have but the for¬ 
tune of Theramenes, one of the thirty tyrants of Athens, 
who escaped, when his house fell upon him, and was shortly 
after put to death with torments by his colleagues in the 
tyranny. 

To which also may be added, that the great evils which 
Happen to the best and wisest men, are one of the great 
arguments, upon the strength of which we can expect feli¬ 
city to our souls and the joys of another world. And cer¬ 
tainly they are then very tolerable and eligible, when, with 
so great advantages, they minister to the faith and hope of 
a Christian. But if we consider what unspeakable tortures 
are provided for the wicked to all eternity, we should not 
be troubled to see them prosperous here, but rather won- 
* der, that their portion in this life is not bigger, and that 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


Ill 

ever they should be sick, or crossed, or affronted, or trou¬ 
bled with the contradiction and disease of their own vices, 
since, if they were fortunate beyond their own ambition, it 
could not make them recompense for one hour’s torment 
in hell, which yet they shall have for their eternal portion. 

After all these considerations deriving from sense and 
experience, grace and reason, there are two remedies still 
remaining, and they are necessity and time. 

6. For it is but reasonable to bear that accident patiently 
which God sends, since impatience does but entangle us, 
like the fluttering of a bird in a net, but cannot at all ease 
our trouble, or prevent the accident: it must be run 
through, and therefore it were better we compose ourselves 
to a patient, than to a troubled and miserable suffering. 

7 But however, if you will not otherwise be cured, time 
at last will do it alone ; and then consider, do you mean 
to mourn always, or but for a time ? If always, you are 
miserable and foolish. If for a time, then why will you not 
a Pply those reasons to your grief at first, with which you 
will cure it at last ? or if you will not cure it with reason, 
see how little of a man there is in you, that you suffer time 
to do more with you than reason or religion! You suffer 
yourself to be cured, just as a beast or a tree is; let 
it alone, and the thing will heal itself: but this is neither 
honourable to thy person, nor of reputation to thy religion. 
However, be content to bear thy calamity, because thou art 
sure, in a little time, it will sit down gentle and easy: for 
to a mortal man no evil is immortal. And here let the 
worst thing happen that can, it will end in death, and we 
commonly think that to be near enough. 

8. Lastly : of those things which are reckoned amongst 
evils, some are better than their contraries ; and to a good 
man, the very worst is tolerable. 

Poverty , or a low Fortune. 

1. Poverty is better than riches, and a mean fortune to 
be chosen before a great and splendid one. It is indeed 
despised, and makes men contemptible: it exposes a man 
to the insolence of evil persons, and leaves a man defence¬ 
less : it is always suspected : its stories are accounted lies, 
and all its counsels follies : it puts a man from all employ¬ 
ment : it makes a man’s discourses tedious, and his society 
troublesome. This is the worst of it: and yet all this, ani 


OF CONTEJNTEDNESS. 


112 

far worse than this, the apostles suffered for being Chris¬ 
tians, and Christianity itself may be esteemed an affliction 
as well as poverty, if this be all that can be said against it; 
for the apostles and the most eminent Christians were 
really poor, and were used contemptuously: and yet, that 
poverty is despised, may be an argument to commend it, 
if it be despised by none but persons vicious and ignorant. 
However, certain it is, that a great fortune is a great vanity, 
and riches is nothing but danger, trouble, and temptation; 
like a garment that is too long, and bears a train ; not so 
useful to one, but it is troublesome to two, to him that bears 
the one part upon his shoulders, and to him that bears 
the other part in his hand. But poverty is the sister of a 
good mind, the parent of sober counsels, and the nurse of 
all virtue. 

For what is it that you admire in the fortune of a great 
king? Is it, that he always goes in a great company? You 
may thrust yourself into the same crowd, or go often to 
church, and then you have as great a company as he hath ; 
and that may, upon as good grounds, please you as him, 
that is, justly neither : for so impertinent and useless pomp, 
and the other circumstances of his distance, are not made 
for him, but for his subjects, that they may learn to sepa¬ 
rate him from common usages, and be taught to be go¬ 
verned. But if you look upon them as fine things in them¬ 
selves, you may quickly alter your opinion, when you shall 
consider, that they cannot cure the tooth-ache, nor make 
one wise, or fill the belly, or give one night’s sleep, (though 
they help to break many,) not satisfying any appetite of 
nature, or reason, or religion : but they are states of great¬ 
ness, which only make it possible for a man to be made 
extremely miserable. And it was long ago observed by the 
Greek tragedians, and from them by Arianus, saying, “ That 
all our tragedies are of kings and princes, and rich or ambi¬ 
tious personages ; but you never see a poor man have apart, 
unless it be as a chorus, or to fill up the scenes, to dance 
or to be derided; but the kings and the great generals. 
First (says he,) they begin with joy, crown the houses: 
but about the third or fourth act they cry out, “O Cithe- 
ron ! why didst thou spare my life to reserve me for this 
more sad calamity ?” And this is really true in the great 
accidents of the world: for a great estate hath great 
crosses, and a mean fortune hath but small ones. It may 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


113 


be, the poor man loses a cow ; for if his child dies, he is 
quit of his biggest care ; but such an accident in a rich and 
splendid family doubles upon the spirits of the parents 
Or, it may be, the poor man is troubled to pay his rent, 
and that is his biggest trouble: but it is a bigger care to 
secure a great fortune in a troubled estate, or with equal 
greatness, or with the circumstances of honour, and the 
niceness of reputation to defend a lawsuit; and that, which 
will secure a common man’s whole estate, is not enough to 
defend a great man’s honour. 

And, therefore, it was not without mystery observed 
among the ancients, that they, who made gods of gold and 
silver, of hope and fear, peace and fortune, garlic and 
onions, beasts and serpents, and a quartan ague, yet never 
deified money : meaning, that however wealth was admired 
by common or abused understandings; yet from riches, 
that is, from that proportion* of good things which is be¬ 
yond the necessities of nature, no moment could be added 
to a man’s real content or happiness. Corn from Sardi¬ 
nia, herds of Calabrian cattle, meadows through which 
pleasant Liris glides, silks from Tyrus, and golden chalices 
to drown my health in, are nothing but instruments of va¬ 
nity or sin, and suppose a disease in the soul of him that 
longs for them, or admires them. And this I have other¬ 
where represented more largely; to which I here add, that 
riches have very great dangers to their souls, not only who 
covet them, but to all that have them. For if a great 
personage undertakes an action passionately, and upon 
great interest, let him manage it indiscreetly, let the whole 
design be unjust, let it be acted with all the malice and 
impotency in the world, he shall have enough to flatter 
him, but not enough to reprove him. He had need be a 
bold man, that shall tell his patron, he is going to hell; 
and that prince had need be a good man, that shall suffer 
such a monitor; and though it be a strange kind of civility 
and an evil dutifulness in friends and relatives, to suffe. 
him to perish without reproof or medicine, rather than to 
seem unmannerly to a great sinner; yet it is none of their 
least infelicities, that their wealth and greatness shall put 
them into sin, and yet put them past reproof. I need not 
instance in the habitual intemperance of rich tables, nor 
the evil accidents and effects of fulness, pride and lust, 
wantonness and softness of disposition, huge talking and 
m 2 


114 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


an imperious spirit, despite of religion and contempt of poor 
persons; at the best, “ it is a great temptation for a man to 
have in his power whatsoever he can have in his sensual 
desires and therefore riches is a blessing, like to a pre¬ 
sent made of a whole vintage to a man in a hectic fever; 
he will be much tempted to drink of it; and if he does, he 
is inflamed, and may chance to die with the kindness. 

Now besides what hath been already noted in the state 
of poverty, there is nothing to be accounted for but the 
fear of wanting necessaries; of which if a man could be 
secured that he might live free from care, all the other 
parts of it might be reckoned amongst the advantages of 
wise and sober persons, rather than objections against that 
state of fortune. 

But concerning this I consider, that there must needs 
be great security to all Christians, since Christ not only 
made express promises, that \vh should have sufficient for 
this life; but also took great pains and used many argu¬ 
ments to create confidence in us: and such they were, 
which by their own strength were sufficient, though you 
abate the authority of the speaker. The Son of God told 
us, his Father takes care of us : he that knew all his Fa¬ 
ther’s counsels and his whole kindness towards mankind, 
told us so. How great is that truth, how certain, how neces¬ 
sary, which Christ himself proved by argument^! The excel¬ 
lent words and most comfortable sentences, which are our 
bills of exchange, upon the credit of which we lay our cares 
down, and receive provisions for our need, are these : “ Take 
no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall 
drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not 
the life more than meat, and the body than raiment ? Be¬ 
hold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they 
reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father 
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they ? Which 
of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his sta¬ 
ture ? And why take ye thought for raiment ? Consider 
the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, nei¬ 
ther do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solo¬ 
mon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 
Therefore if God so clothe the grass of the field, which 
to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not 
much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore 

* Jam. ii. 5—7. 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


115 

take no thought, saying, What shall we eat ? or what 
shall we drink? or wherewithal shall we be clothed? (for 
after all these things do the Gentiles seek) for your hea¬ 
venly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 
But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteous¬ 
ness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take 
therefore no thought for the morrow ,* for the morrow shall 
take thought for the things of itself: sufficient to the day 
is the evil thereof.”* The same discourse is repeated by 
St. Luke :j* and accordingly our duty is urged, and our con¬ 
fidence abetted, by the disciples of our Lord, in divers places 
of Holy Scripture. So St. Paul: “ Be careful for nothing, 
but in every thing by prayer and supplication, with thanks¬ 
giving, let your requests be made known unto God.”:f: And 
again, “ Charge them that are rich in this world, that they 
be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the 
living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy .”§ And 
yet again, “ Let your conversation be without covetousness, 
and be content with such things as ye have ; for he hath 
said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee: so that we 
may boldly say, The Lord is my helper.”|| And all this is 
by St. Peter summed up in our duty, thu3: “ Cast all your 
care upon him, for he careth for you.” Which words he 
seems to have borrowed out of the fifty-fifth Psalm, v. 22, 
where David saith the same thing almost in the same 
words. To which I only add the observation made by him, 
and the argument of experience; “ I have been young and 
now am old, and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, 
nor his seed begging their bread.” And now after all this, 
a fearless confidence in God, and concerning a provision of 
necessaries, is so reasonable, that it is become a duty; and 
he is scarce a Christian, whose faith is so little as to be jea 
lous of God, and suspicious concerning meat and clothes 
that man hath nothing in him of the nobleness or confidence 
of charity. 

Does not God provide for all the birds, and beasts, and 
fishes ? Do not the sparrows fly from their bush, and every 
morning find meat, where they laid it not? Do not the 
young ravens call to God, and he feeds them ? And were 
it reasonable, that the sons of the family should fear, the 
Father would give meat to the chickens and the servants, 

* Matt. vi. 25 , &c. t Luke xii. 22—31. t Phil. iv. 6. 

$ 1 Tim. vi. 17. II Heb. xiii. 5 , 6. 


116 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


his sheep and his dogs, but give none to them? He were 
a very ill father, that should do so; or he were a very 
foolish son, that should think so of a good father. But, 
besides the reasonableness of this faith and this hope, we 
have infinite experience of it. How innocent, how care¬ 
less, how secure is infancy ! and yet how certainly provided ! 
We have lived at God’s charges all the days of our life, and 
have (as the Italian proverb says) set down to meat at the 
sound of a bell; and hitherto he hath not failed us : we have 
no reason to suspect him for the future ; we do not use to 
serve men so; and less time of trial creates great confi¬ 
dences in us towards them, who for twenty years together 
never broke their word with us; and God hath so ordered 
it, that a man shall have had the experience of many 
years’ provision, before he shall understand how to doubt; 
that he may be provided for an answer against the tempta¬ 
tion shall come, and the mercies felt in his childhood may 
make him fearless, when he is a man. Add to this, that God 
hath given us his Holy Spirit: he hath promised heaven to 
us : he hath given us his Son ; and we are taught from Scrip¬ 
ture to make this inference from hence, “ How should net 
he with him give us all things else ?” 

The Charge of many Children. 

We have a title to be provided for, as we are God’s 
creatures, another title as we are his children, another be¬ 
cause God hath promised; and every of our children hath 
the same title; and therefore it is a huge folly and infide¬ 
lity to be troubled and full of care, because we have many 
children. Every child we have to feed, is a new revenue, 
a new title to God’s care and providence : so that many 
children are a great wealth and if it be said they are 
chargeable, it is no more than all wealth and great reve¬ 
nues are. For what difference is it? Titus keeps ten 
ploughs, Cornelia hath ten children: he hath land enough 
to employ and to feed all his hinds ; she, blessings, and pro¬ 
mises, and the provisions and the truth of God, to main¬ 
tain all her children. His hinds and horses eat up all his 
corn, and her children are sufficiently maintained with 
her little. They bring in and eat up ; and she indeed eats 
up, but they also bring in from the store-houses of hea¬ 
ven, and the granaries of God and my children are not 
so much mine as they are God s; he feeds them in the 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


-_7 

womb by ways secret and insensible ; and would not work 
a perpetual miracle to bring them forth, and then to starve 
them. 

Violent Necessities. 

But some men are highly tempted, and are brought tc 
a strait; that, without a miracle, they cannot be relieved 
what shall they do? It may be, their pride or vanity hatl 
brought the necessity upon them, and it is not a need ol 
God’s making; and if it be not, they must cure it them¬ 
selves, by lessening their desires, and moderating their ap 
petites : and yet, if it be innocent, though unnecessary, 
God does usually relieve such necessities; and he doe? 
not only upon our prayers grant us more than he pro¬ 
mised of temporal things, but also he gives many times 
more than we ask. This is no object for our faith, but 
ground enough for a temporal and prudent hope ; and, if 
we fail in the particular, God will turn it to a bigger mercy, 
if wc submit to his dispensation, and adore him in the de¬ 
nial. But if it be a matter of necessity, let not any man, 
by way of impatience, cry out, that God will not work a 
miracle ; for God, by miracle, did give meat and drink to 
his people in the wilderness, of which he had made no par¬ 
ticular promise in any covenant: and if all natural means 
fail, it is certain, that God will rather work a miracle than 
break his word ; he can do that, he cannot do this. Only 
we must remember that our portion of temporal things is 
but food and raiment. God hath not promised us coaches 
and horses, rich houses and jewels, Tyrian silks and Per¬ 
sian carpets; neither hath he promised to minister to our 
needs in such circumstances as we shall appoint, but such 
as himself shall choose. God will enable either thee to 
pay thy debt (if thou beggest it of him,) or else he will pay 
it for thee ; that is, take thy desire as a discharge of thy 
duty, and pay it to thy creditor in blessings, or in some se¬ 
cret of his providence. It may be he hath laid up the corn, 
that shall feed thee, in the granary of thy brother; or will 
clothe thee with his wool. He enabled St. Peter to pay 
his gabel by the ministry of a fish; and Elias to be waited 
on by a crow, who was both his minister and his steward 
for provisions; and his only Son rode in triumph upon an 
ass, that grazed in another man’s pastures. And if God 
gives to him the dominion, and reserves the use to thee, 
thou hast the better half of the two; but the charitable 


£18 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


man serves God and serves thy need; and both join to pro. 
vide for thee, and God blesses both. But if he takes 
away the flesh-pots from thee, he can also alter the ap¬ 
petite, and he hath given thee power and commandment 
to restrain it; and if he lessens the revenue, he will also 
shrink the necessity ; or if he gives but a very little, he will 
make it go a great way ; or if he sends thee but a coarse 
diet, he will bless it and make it healthful, and can cure 
all the anguish of thy poverty by giving thee patience, and 
the grace of contentedness. For the grace of God secures 
you of provisions, and yet the grace of God feeds and 
supports the spirit in the want of provisions: and if a thin 
table be apt to enfeeble the spirits of one used to feed bet¬ 
ter, yet the cheerfulness of a spirit, that is blessed, will 
make a thin table become a delicacy, if the man was as 
well taught as he was fed, and learned his duty when he 
received the blessing. Poverty, therefore, is in some 
senses eligible, and to be preferred before riches; but, in 
all senses, it is very tolerable. 

Death of Children , or nearest Relatives and Friends. 

There are some persons, who have been noted for ex¬ 
cellent in their lives and passions, rarely innocent, and yet 
hugely penitent for indiscretions and harmless infirmities ; 
such as was Paulina, one of the ghostly children of St. 
Jerome; and yet when any of her children died, she was 
arrested with a sorrow so great, as brought her to the 
margent of her grave. And the more tender our spirits 
are made by religion, the more easy we are to let in grief, 
if the cause be innocent, and be but in any sense twisted 
with piety and due affections. To cure which, we may 
consider, that all the world must die, and therefore to be 
impatient at the death of a person, concerning whom it 
was certain and known that he must die, is to mourn, be¬ 
cause thy friend or child was not born an angel; and, 
when thou hast awhile made thyself miserable by an im¬ 
portunate and useless grief, it may be thou shalt die thy¬ 
self, and leave others to their choice, whether they will 
mourn for thee or no: but, by that time, it will appear, 
how impertinent that grief was, which served no end of 
life, and ended in thy own funeral. But what great matter 
is it, if sparks fly upward, or a stone falls into a pit; if 
that which was combustible be burned, or that which 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


119 

was liquid be melted, or that which is mortal do die ? It 
is no more than a man does every day : for every night 
death hath gotten possession of that day, and we shall never 
live that day over again ; and when the last day is come, 
there are no more days left for us to die. And what is 
sleeping and waking, but living and dying? what is spring 
and autumn, youth and old age, morning and evening, but 
seal images of life and death, and really the same to many 
considerable effects and changes ? 

Untimely Death. 

But it is not mere dying, that is pretended by some as 
the cause of their impatient mourning; but that the child 
died young, before he knew good and evil, his right hand 
from his left, and so lost all his portion of this world, and 
they know not of what excellency his portion in the next 
shall be. If he died young, he lost but little; for he un¬ 
derstood but little, and had not capacities of great plea¬ 
sures or great cares : but yet he died innocent, and before 
the sweetness of his soul was deflowered and ravished from 
him by the flames and follies of a froward age : he went 
out from the dining-room, before he had fallen into error 
by the intemperance of his meat, or the deluge of drink : 
and he hath obtained this favour of God, that his soul 
hath suffered a less imprisonment, and her load was sooner 
taken off, that he might, with lesser delays, go and con¬ 
verse with immortal spirits; and the babe is taken into 
paradise, before he knows good and evil. (For that know¬ 
ledge threw our great father out, and this ignorance re¬ 
turns the child thither.) But, as concerning thy own par 
ticular, remove thy thoughts back to those days, in which 
thy child was not born, and you are now, but as then you 
were, and there is no difference, but that you had a son 
born ; and if you reckon that for evil, you are unthankful 
for the blessing; if it be good, it is better that you had the 
blessing for awhile, than not at all; and yet, if he had 
never been born, this sorrow had not been at all. But be 
no more displeased at God for giving you a blessing for 
awhile, than you would have been if he had not given it at 
all; and reckon that intervening blessing for a gain, but 
account it not an evil: and if it be a good, turn it not into 
sorrow and sadness. But if we have great reason to com¬ 
plain of the calamities and evils of our life, then we have 


120 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


the less reason to grieve, that those, whom we loved, have 
so small a portion of evil assigned to them. And it is nG 
small advantage that our children dying young receive , 
for their condition of a blessed immortality is rendered to 
them secure by being snatched from the dangers of an evil 
choice, and carried to their little cells of felicity, where they 
can weep no more. And this the wisest of the Gentiles 
understood well, when they forbade any offerings or liba¬ 
tions to be made for dead infants, as was usual for their 
other dead; as believing they were entered into a secure 
possession, to which they went with no other condition, 
but that they passed into it through the way of mortality, 
and, for a few months, wore an uneasy garment. And let 
weeping parents say, if they do not think, that the evils 
their little babes have suffered are sufficient. If they be, 
why are they troubled, that they were taken from those 
many and greater, which, in succeeding years, are great 
enough to try all the reason and religion, which art, and 
nature, and the grace of God, hath produced in us, to 
enable us for such sad contentions? And, possibly, we 
may doubt concerning men and women, but we cannot sus¬ 
pect, that, to infants, death can be such an evil, but that it 
brings to them much more good, than it takes from them in 
this life. 

Death unseasonable. 

But others can well bear the death of infants; but when 
they have spent some years of childhood or youth, and are 
entered into arts and society, when they are hopeful and 
provided for, when the parents are to reap the comfort of 
all their fears and cares, then it breaks the spirit to lose 
them. This is true in many; but this is not love to the 
dead, but to themselves; for they miss, what they had 
flattered themselves into by hope and opinion : and if it 
were kindness to the dead, they may consider, that, since 
we hope he is gone to God and rest, it is an ill expression 
- of our love to them, that we weep for their good fortune. 
For that life is not best, which is longest: and when they 
are descended into the grave, it shall not be inquired how 
long they have lived, but how well; and yet this shortening 
of their days is an evil wholly depending upon opinion. 
For if men did naturally live but twenty years, then we 
should be satisfied, if they died about sixteen or eighteen ; 
and yet eighteen years now are as long, as eighteen years 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


121 

would be then : and if a man were but of a day’s life, it is 
well if he lasts to even-song, and then says his compline 
an hour before the time : and we are pleased, and call no 
that death immature, if he lives till seventy; and yet this 
age is as short of the old periods before and since the flood 
as this youth’s age (for whom you mourn) is of the present 
fulness. Suppose, therefore, a decree passed upon this 
person, (as there have been many upon all mankind,) and 
God hath set him a shorter period; and then we may as 
well bear the immature death of the young man, as the 
death of the oldest men: for also they are immature and 
unseasonable in respect of the old periods of many gene¬ 
rations. And why are we troubled, that he had arts and 
sciences before he died? or are we troubled, that he does 
not live to make use of them ? The first is cause of joy, for 
they are excellent in order to certain ends; and the second 
cannot be cause of sorrow, because he hath no need to use 
them, as the case now stands, being provided for with the 
provisions of an angel, and the manner of eternity. How¬ 
ever, the sons and the parents, friends and relatives, are in 
the world, like hours and minutes to a day. The hour 
comes, and must pass ; and some stay but minutes, and 
they also pass, and shall never return again. But let it be 
considered, that from the time in which a man is conceived, 
from that time forward to eternity he shall never cease to 
be ; and let him die young or old, still he hath an immortal 
soul, and hath laid down his body only for a time, as that 
which was the instrument of his trouble and sorrow, and the 
scene of sicknesses and disease. But he is in a more noble 
manner of being after death, than he can be here; and the 
child may, with more reason, be allowed to cry for leaving his 
mother’s womb for the world, than a man can for changing 
this world for another. 

Sudden Death or violent. 

Others are yet troubled at the manner of their child’s or 
friend’s death. He was drowned, or lost his head, or died 
of the plague ; and this is a new spring of sorrow. But no 
man can give a sensible account, how it shall be worse for 
a child to die with drowning in half an hour, than to endure 
a fever of one-and-twenty days. And if my friend lost his 
head, so he did not lose his constancy and his religion, he 
died with huge advantage. 

N 


122 


OF CONTENTEDNESS. 


Being Childless. 

But, by this means, I am left without an heir. Well, sup 
pose that: thou hast no heir, and I have no inheritance: 
and there are many kings and emperors that have died 
childless, many royal lines are extinguished : and Augustus 
Caesar was forced to adopt his wife’s son to inherit all the 
Roman greatness. And there are many wise persons that 
never married; and we read no where, that any of the chil¬ 
dren of the apostles did survive their fathers: and all that 
inherit any thing of Christ’s kingdom, come to it by adop¬ 
tion, not by natural inheritance ; and to die without a natural 
heir is no intolerable evil, since it was sanctified in the per¬ 
son of Jesus, who died a virgin. 

j Evil or unfortunate Children. 

And by this means we are freed from the greater sorrows 
of having a fool, a swine, or a goat, to rule after us in our 
families; and yet even this condition admits of comfort. 
For all the wild Americans are supposed to be the sons of 
Dodonaim; and the sons of Jacob are now the most scat¬ 
tered and despised people in the whole world. The son of 
Solomon was but a silly weak man; and the son of Heze- 
kiah was wicked: and all the fools and barbarous people, 
all the thieves and pirates, all the slaves and miserable men 
and women of the world, are the sons and daughters of 
Noah ; and we must not look to be exempted from that por¬ 
tion of sorrow, which God gave to Noah and Adam, to Abra¬ 
ham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; I pray God send us into the 
lot of Abraham. But if any thing happens worse to us, it s 
enough for us, that we bear it evenly. 

Our own Death. 

And how, if you were to die yourself? You know you 
must. Only be ready for it, by the preparations of a good 
life; and then it is the greatest good that ever happened 
to thee ; else there is nothing that can comfort you. But 
if you have served God in a holy life, send away the wo¬ 
men and the weepers; tell them it is as much intempe¬ 
rance to weep too much as to laugh too much: and when 
thou art alone, or with fitting company, die as thou shouldst, 
but do not die impatiently, and like a fox catched in a trap. 
For if you fear death, you shall never the more avoid it, 
but you make it miserable. Fannius, that killed himself 


PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL GRACES. 


123 

for fear of death, died as certainly as Porcia, that ate 
burning coals, or Cato, that cut his own throat. To die 
is necessary and natural, and it may be honourable ; but 
to die poorly, and basely, and sinfully, that alone is it that 
can make a man unfortunate. No man can be a slave, 
but he that fears pain, or fears to die. To such a man 
nothing but chance and peaceable times can secure his duty, 
and he depends upon things without for his felicity ; and so 
is well but during the pleasure of his enemy, or a thief, or 
a tyrant, or it may be of a dog or a wild bull. 

Prayers for the several Graces and parts of Christian 

Sobriety . 

A Prayer against Sensuality. 

O eternal Father, thou that sittest in heaven invested 
with essential glories and divine perfections, fill my soul 
with so deep a sense of the excellencies of spiritual and 
heavenly things, that, my affections being weaned from 
the pleasures of the world, and the false allurements of 
sin, I may, with great severity, and the prudence of a holy 
discipline and strict desires, with clear resolutions and a 
free spirit, have my conversation in heaven and heavenly 
employments ; that being, in affections as in my condition, 
a pilgrim and a stranger here, I may covet after and labour 
for an abiding city, and at last may enter into, and for ever 
dwell in, the celestial Jerusalem, which is the mother of 
us all, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

For Temperance . 

O Almighty God and gracious Father of men and angels 
who openest thy hand and fillest all things with plenty, 
and hast provided for thy servant sufficient to satisfy all my 
needs ; teach me to use thy creatures soberly and tempe¬ 
rately, that I may not, with loads of meat or drink, make 
the temptations of mine enemy to prevail upon me, or my 
spirit unapt for the performance of my duty, or my body 
healthless, or my affections sensual and unholy. O my 
God, never suffer that the blessings, which thou givest me, 
may either minister to sin or sickness, but to health and 
holiness and thanksgiving; that in the strength of thy pro¬ 
visions I may cheerfully, and actively, and diligently, serve 
thee: that I may worthily feast at thy table here, and be 
accounted worthy, through thy grace, to be admitted to 
thy table hereafter, at the eternal supper of the Lamb, to 


124 


PRAYERS FOR 


sing an hallelujah to God the Father, the Son md the Holy 
Ghost, for ever and ever. Amen. 

For Chastity : to he said especially hy unmarried Persons. 

Almighty God, our most holy and eternal Father, whe 
art of pure eyes, and canst behold no uncleanness; let thy 
gracious and Holy Spirit descend upon thy servant, and 
reprove the spirit of fornication and uncleanness, and cast 
him out, that my body may be a holy temple, and my soul 
a sanctuary to entertain the Prince of purities, the holy and 
eternal Spirit of God. O let no impure thoughts pollute 
that soul, which God hath sanctified; no unclean words 
pollute that tongue, which God hath commanded to be an 
organ of his praises ; no unholy and unchaste action rend 
the veil of that temple, where the holy Jesus hath been 
pleased to enter, and hath chosen for his habitation ; but 
seal up all my senses from all vain objects, and let them 
be entirely possessed with religion, and fortified with pru¬ 
dence, watchfulness, and mortification ; that I, possessing 
my vessel in holiness, may let it down with a holy hope, 
and receive it again in a joyful resurrection, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen. 

A Prayer for the Love of God, to he said hy Virgins and 

Widows , professed or resolved so to live: and may he 

used hy any one. 

O holy and purest Jesus, who wert pleased to espouse 
every holy soul, and join it to thee with a holy union and 
mysterious instruments of religious society and communi¬ 
cations ; O fill my soul with religion, and desires, holy as 
the thoughts of cherubim, passionate beyond the love of 
women; that I may love thee, as much as ever any crea¬ 
ture loved thee, even with all my soul, and all my facul¬ 
ties, and all the degrees of every faculty ; let me know 
no loves but those of duty and charity, obedience and de¬ 
votion ; that I may for ever run after thee, who art the king 
of virgins, and with whom whole kingdoms are in love, and 
for whose sake queens have died, and at whose feet kings, 
with joy, have laid their crowns and sceptres. My soul 
is thine, O dearest Jesu ; thou art my Lord, and hast bound 
up my eyes and heart from all stranger affections ; give me 
for my dowry, purity and humility, modesty and devotion, 
charity and patience, and at last bring me into the bride- 
chamber to partake of the fe icities, and to lie in the bosom, 


SEVERAL GRACES 


125 

of the bridegroom to eternal ages, O holy and sweetest Sa¬ 
viour Jesus. Amen. 

A Prayer to be said by married Persons in behalf 
• of themselves and each other . 

O eternal and gracious Father, who hast consecrated 
the holy estate of marriage to become mysterious, and to 
represent the union of Christ and his church, let thy Holy 
spirit so guide me in the doing the duties of this state, that 
it may not become a sin unto me ; nor that liberty, which 
thou hast hallowed by the Holy Jesus, become an occasion 
of licentiousness by my own weakness and sensuality : and 
do thou forgive all those irregularities and too sensual ap¬ 
plications, which may have, in any degree, discomposed 
my spirit and the severity of a Christian. Let me, in all 
accidents and circumstances, be severe in my duty towards 
thee, affectionate and dear to my wife (or husband ,) a 
guide and good example to my family, and in all quiet¬ 
ness, sobriety, prudence, and peace, a follower of those 
holy pairs, who have served thee with godliness and a 
good testimony. And the blessings of the eternal God, 
blessings of the right hand and of the left, be upon the 
body and soul of thy servant my wife (or husband ,) and 
abide upon her (or him) till the end of a holy and happy 
life; and grant that both of us may live together for ever 
in the embraces of the holy and eternal Jesus, our Lord and 
Saviour. Amen. 

A Prayer for the Grace of Humility. 

O holy and most gracious Master and Saviour Jesus, who 
by thy example and by thy precept, by the practice of a 
whole life and frequent discourses, didst command us to be 
meek and humble in imitation of thy incomparable sweetness 
and great humility; be pleased to give me the grace, as 
thou hast given me the commandment: enable me to do what¬ 
soever thou commandest, and command whatsoever thou 
pleasest. O mortify in me all proud thoughts and vain 
opinions of myself: let me return to thee the acknow¬ 
ledgment and the fruits of all those good things thou hast 
given me, that, by confessing I am wholly in debt to thee 
for them, I may not boast myself for what I have received, 
and for what I am highly accountable: and for what is my 
own, teach me to be ashamed and humbled, it being no- 
n 2 


PRAYERS FOR SEVERAL GRACES. 


126 

thing but sin and misery, weakness and uncleanness. Let 
me go before my brethren in nothing but in striving to do 
them honour, and thee glory, never to seek my own praise, 
never to delight in it, when it is offered; that despismg 
myself I may be accepted by thee in the honours, with which 
thou shalt crown thy humble and despised servants, for 
Jesus’s sake, in the kingdom of eternal glory. Amen. 

Acts of Humility and Modesty by way of Prayer and 

Meditation . 

I. 

Lord, I know that my spirit is light and thorny, my body 
is brutish and exposed to sickness ; I am constant to folly, 
and inconstant in holy purposes. My labours are vain and 
fruitless; my fortune full of change and trouble, seldom 
pleasing, never perfect: my wisdom is folly ; being ignorant 
even of the parts and passions of my own body: and what 
am I, O Lord, before thee, but a miserable person, hugely 
in debt, not able to pay ? 

II. 

Lord, I am nothing, and I have nothing of myself: I am 
less than the least of all thy mercies. 

III. 

What was I before my birth? First, nothing, and then un¬ 
cleanness. What during my childhood? Weakness and folly. 
What in my youth ? Folly still and passion, lust, and wild¬ 
ness. What in my whole life? A great sinner, a deceived 
and an abused person. Lord, pity me; for it is thy good¬ 
ness, that I am kept from confusion and amazement, when 
I consider the misery and shame of my person, and the de¬ 
filements of my nature. 

IV. 

Lord, what am I ? And, Lord, what art thou? “ What is 
man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that 
thou so regardest him ?” 

V. 

“ How can man be justified with God ? Or how can he be 
clean, that is born of a woman ? Behold, even to the moon, 
and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight; 
How much less man, that is a worm, and the son of man, 
which is a worm !”* 


* Job xxv. 4. 


OF CHRISTIAN JUSTICE. 


121 


A Prayer for a contented Spirit and the Grace of 
Moderation and Patience. 

O Almighty God, Father and Lord of all the creatures, 
who hast disposed all things and all chances so as may best 
glorify thy wisdom, and serve the ends of thy justice, and 
magnify thy mercy, by secret and indiscernible ways bring¬ 
ing good out of evil; I most humbly beseech thee to give 
me wisdom from above, that I may adore thee, and admire 
thy ways and footsteps, which are in the great deep and not 
to be searched out: teach me to submit to thy providence 
in all things, to be content in all changes of person and 
condition, to be temperate in prosperity, and to read my 
duty in the lines of thy mercy; and, in adversity, to be 
meek, patient, and resigned; and to look through the cloud, 
that I may wait for the consolation of the Lord, and the day 
of redemption ; in the mean time doing my duty with an un¬ 
wearied diligence, and an undisturbed resolution, having no 
fondness for the vanities or possessions of this world ; but 
laying up my hopes in heaven and the rewards of holy liv¬ 
ing, and being strengthened with the spirit of the inner man, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

CHAPTER III. 

OF CHRISTIAN JUSTICE. 

Justice is, by the Christian religion, enjoined in all its 
parts by these two propositions in Scripture: “ What¬ 
soever ye would that men should do to you, even so do to 
them.” This is the measure of commutative justice, or of 
that justice, which supposes exchange of things profitable 
for things profitable : that, as I supply your need, you may 
supply mine; as I do a benefit to you, I may receive one 
by you : and because every man may be injured by an¬ 
other, therefore his security shall depend upon mine: if he 
will not let me be safe, he shall not be safe himself (only 
the manner of his being punished is, upon great reason, 
both by God and all the world, taken from particulars, 
and committed to a public disinterested person, who will 
do justice without passion, both to him and to me ;) if he 
refuses to do me advantage, he shall receive none, when 
his needs require it. And thus God gave necessities tc 
men, that all men might need ; and several abilities to se- 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


US 

verai pemns, that each man might help to supply the pub¬ 
lic needs, and by joining to fill up all wants, they may knit 
together by justice, as the parts of the world are by na¬ 
ture : and he hath made all obnoxious to injuries, and 
made every little thing strong enough to do us hurt by 
some instrument or other ; and hath given us all a suffi¬ 
cient stock of self-love, and desire of self-preservation, to 
be as the chain to tie together all the parts of society, and 
to restrain us from doing violence, lest we be violently dealt 
withal ourselves. 

The other part of justice is commonly called distributive, 
and is commanded in tins rule, “ Render to all their dues ; 
tribute to whom tribute is due; custom, to whom custom ; 
fear, to whom fear; honour, to whom honour. Owe no 
man any thing, but to love one another.”* This justice is 
distinguished from the first: because the obligation de¬ 
pends not upon contract or express bargain, but passes upon 
us by virtue of some command cf God, or of our superior, 
by nature or by grace, by piety or religion, by trust or by 
office, according to that commandment, “ As every man hath 
received the gift, so let him minister the same, one to an¬ 
other, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”f 
And as the first considers an equality of persons in respect 
of the contract or particular necessity, this supposes a differ¬ 
ence of persons, and no particular bargains, but such neces¬ 
sary intercourses, as by the laws of God or man are introduced. 
But I shall reduce all the particulars of both kinds to these 
four heads: 1. Obedience ; 2. Provision, 3. Negotiation; 
4. Restitution. 

SECTION I. 

Of Obedience to our Superior „. 

Our superiors are set over us in affairs of the world, or 
the affairs of the soul, and things pertaining to religion, 
and are called accordingly, ecclesiastical or civil. To¬ 
wards whom our duty is thus generally described in the 
New Testament. For temporal or civil governors the com¬ 
mands are these : “ Render to Caesar the things that are 
Caesar’s;” and “ Let every soul be subject to the higher 
powers: for there is no power but of God : the powers 
that be, are ordained of God: whosoever therefore resist- 

11 Pet iv. 10. 


* Rom. xiii. 7. 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


129 


eth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God ; and they 
that resist, shall receive to themselves damnation and 
“ Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and 
powers, and to obey magistrates f and “ Submit yourselves 
to every ordinance of man, for the Lord’s sake ; whether it 
be to the king, as supreme ; or unto governors, as unto them 
that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and 
the praise of them that do well.”:}: 

For spiritual or ecclesiastical governors, thus we are com¬ 
manded : “Obey them that have the rule over you, and 
submit yourselves; for they watch for your souls, as they that 
must give an account and “ Hold such in reputation ;”|j 
and “ To this end did I write, that I might know the proof 
of you, whether ye be obedient in all things :”1T said St. 
Paul to the church of Corinth. Our duty is reducible to 
practice by the following rules. 

Acts and Duties of Obedience to all our Superiors. 

1. We must obey all human laws appointed and constituted 
by lawful authority, that is, of the supreme power, according 
to the constitution of the place in which we live ,* all laws, 
I mean, which are not against the law of God. 

2. In obedience to human laws, we must observe the 
letter of the law, where we can, without doing violence to 
the reason of the law, and the intention of the lawgiver : 
but, where they cross each other, the charity of the law is 
to be preferred before its discipline; and the reason of it, 
before the letter. 

3. If the general reason of the law ceases in our particu¬ 
lar, and a contrary reason rises upon us, we are to procure 
dispensation, or leave to omit the observation of it in such 
circumstances, it there be any persons or office appointed for 
granting it: but if there be none, or if it is not easily to be 
had, or not without an inconvenience greater than the good 
of the observation of the law in our particular, we are dis¬ 
pensed withal in the nature of the thing, without farther 
process or trouble. 

4. As long as the law is obligatory, so long our obedience 
is due; and he that begins a contrary custom without rea¬ 
son, sins : but he, that breaks the law, when the custom is 
entered and fixed, is excused; because it is supposed the 

* Rom. xiii. 1. + Titus iii. 1. t 1 Pet. ii. 13. 

$ Heb. xiii. 17. II Phil. ii. 29. IT 2 Cor. ii. 9 


130 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


legislative power consents, when, by not punishing, it suf¬ 
fers disobedience to grow up to a custom. 

5. Obedience to human laws must be for conscience 
sake: that is, because, in such obedience, public order, 
and charity, and benefit, are concerned, and because the 
law of God commands us ; therefore we must make a con¬ 
science in keeping the just laws of superiors : and, although 
the matter before the making of the law was indifferent, 
yet now the obedience is not indifferent; but, next to the 
laws of God, we are to obey the laws of all our superiors, 
who the more public they are, the first they are to be in the 
order of obedience. 

6. Submit to the punishment and censure of the laws, 
and seek not to reverse their judgment by opposing, but 
by submitting, or flying, or silence, to pass through it or 
by it, as we can: and although from inferior judges we 
may appeal, where the law permits us, yet we must sit 
down and rest in the judgment of the Supreme: and if we 
be wronged, let us complain to God of the injury, not of 
the persons; and he will deliver thy soul from unrighteous 
judges. 

7. Do not believe thou hast kept the law, when thou hast 
suffered the punishment. For although patiently to submit 
to the power of the sword be a part of obedience, yet this is 
such a part, as supposes another left undone : and the law 
punishes, not because she is as well pleased in taking ven¬ 
geance as in being obeyed; but, because she is pleased, she 
uses punishment as a means to secure obedience for the 
future, or in others. Therefore, although in such cases the 
law is satisfied, and the injury and the injustice are paid for 
yet the sins of irreligion, and scandal, and disobedience to 
God, must still be so accounted for, as to cnf^e pardon ; and 
be washed off by repentance. 

8. Human laws are not to be broken with scandal, noi 
at all without reason; for he that does it causelessly, is a 
despiser of the law, and undervalues the authority. For 
human laws differ from Divine laws principally in this: 1. 
That the positive commands of a man may be broken upon 
smaller and more reasons, than the positive commands of 
God ; we may, upon a smaller reason, omit to keep any 
jf the fasting-days of the church, than omit to give alms to 
the poor: only this, the reason must bear weight according 
to the gravity and concernment of the law ; a law, in a small 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


131 


matter, may be omitted for a small reason ; in a great mat¬ 
ter, not without a greater reason. And, 2. The negative 
precepts of men may cease by many instruments, by con¬ 
trary customs, by public disrelish, by long omission : but 
the negative precepts of God never can cease, but when 
they are expressly abrogated by the same authority. But 
what those reasons are, that can dispense with the command 
of a man, a man may be his own judge, and sometimes take 
his proportions from his own reason and necessity, some¬ 
times from public fame, and the practice of pious and se¬ 
vere persons, and from popular customs; in which a man 
shall walk most safely, when he does not walk alone, 
but a spiritual man takes him by the hand. 

9. We must not be too forward in procuring dispensa¬ 
tions, nor use them any longer, than the reason continues, 
for which we first procured them: for to be dispensed 
withal is an argument, of natural infirmity, if it be neces¬ 
sary ; but, if it be not, it signifies an undisciplined and un¬ 
mortified spirit. 

10. We must not be too easy in examining the prudence 
and unreasonableness of human laws : for although we are 
not bound to believe them all to be the wisest; yet if, by 
inquiring into the lawfulness of them, or by any other in¬ 
strument, we find them to fail of that wisdom, with which 
some others are ordained, yet we must never make use of 
it to disparage the person of the lawgiver, or to countenance 
any man’s disobedience, much less our own. 

11. Pay that reverence to the person of thy prince, of 
his ministers, of thy parents and spiritual guides, which, 
by the customs of the place thou livest in, are usually paid 
to such persons in their several degrees: that is, that the 
highest reverence be paid to the highest person, and so 
still in proportion ; and that this reverence be expressed 
in all the circumstances and manners of the city and 
nation. 

12. Lift not up thy hand against thy prince or parent, 
upon what pretence soever: but bear all personal affronts 
and inconveniences at their hands, and seek no remedy but 
by patience and piety, yielding and praying, or absenting 
thyself. 

13. Speak not evil of the ruler of thy people, neither 
curse thy father or mother, nor revile thy spiritual guides, 
nor discover and lay naked their infirmities: but treat them 


132 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


with reverence and religion, and preserve their authority 
sacred, by esteeming their persons venerable. 

14. Pay tribute and customs to princes according to the 
laws, and maintenance to thy parents according to their 
necessity, and honourable support to the clergy according 
to the dignity of the work, and the customs of the place. 

15. Remember always, that duty to our superiors is not 
an act of commutative justice, but of distributive; that is, 
although kings and parents and spiritual guides are to 
pay a great duty to their inferiors, the' duty of their seve¬ 
ral charges and government: yet the good government of 
a king and of parents are actions of religion, as they relate 
to God, and of piety, as they relate to their people and fa¬ 
milies. And although we usually call them just princes, 
who administer their laws exactly to the people, because 
the actions are in the manner of justice; yet, in propriety 
of speech, they are rather to be called pious and religious. 
For as he is not called a just hither, that educates his chil¬ 
dren well, but pious ; so that prince, who defends and well 
rules his people, is religious, and does that duty, for which 
alone, he is answerable to God. The consequence of which 
is this, so far as concerns our duty : If the prince or parent 
fail of their duty, we must not fail of ours; for we are an¬ 
swerable to them and to God too, as being accountable to 
all our superiors, and so are they to theirs : they are above 
us, and God is above them. 

Remedies against Disobedience, and means to endear our 
Obedience ; by way of consideration. 

1. Consider, that all authority descends from God, and 
our superiors bear the image of the Divine power, which 
God imprints on them as on an image of clay, or a coin 
upon a less perfect metal, which whoso defaces, shall not be 
answerable for the loss or spoil of the materials, but the de¬ 
facing the king’s image; and, in the same measure, will 
God require it at our hands, if we despise his authority, 
upon whomsoever he hath imprinted it. “ He that despiseth 
you, despiseth me.” And Dathan and Abiram were said 
to be “ gathered together against the Lord.” And this was 
St. Paul’s argument for our obedience : “ The powers that 
be, are ordained of God.” 

2. There is very great peace and immunity from sin in 
resigning our wills up to the command of others : for pro^ 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


138 

vided that our duty to God be secured, their commands are 
warrants to us in all things else; and the case of con¬ 
science is determined, if the command be evident and press¬ 
ing ; and it is certain, the action, that is but indifferent, and 
without reward, if done only upon our own choice, is an 
act of duty and of religion, and rewardable by the grace 
and favour of God, if done in obedience to the command 
of our superiors. For since naturally we desire what is 
forbidden us (and sometimes there is no other evil in the 
thing, but that it is forbidden us,) God hath in grace en¬ 
joined and proportionably accepts obedience, as being di¬ 
rectly opposed to the former irregularity ; and it is accept¬ 
able, although there be no other good in the thing, that is 
commanded us, but that it is commanded. 

3. By obedience, we are made a society and a republic, 
and distinguished from herds of beasts, and heaps of flies, 
who do what they list, and are incapable of laws, and obey 
none ; and therefore are killed and destroyed, though never 
punished, and they never can have a reward. 

4. By obedience, we are rendered capable of all the 
blessings of government, signified by St. Paul in these 
words: “ He is the minister of God to thee for good and 
by St. Peter in these : “ Governors are sent by him for the 
punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that 
do weli/’f And he that ever felt, or saw, or can under¬ 
stand, the miseries of confusion in public affairs, or amaze¬ 
ment in a heap of sad, tumultuous, and indefinite thoughts, 
may, from thence, judge of the admirable effects of order, 
and the beauty of government. What health is to the 
body, and peace is to the spirit, that is government to the 
societies of men ; the greatest blessing, which they can re¬ 
ceive in that temporal capacity. 

5. No man shall ever be fit to govern others, that knows 
not first how to obey. For if the spirit of a subject be re¬ 
bellious, in a prince it will be tyrannical and intolerable : 
and of so ill example, that as it will encourage the disobe¬ 
dience of others, so it will render it unreasonable for him 
to exact of others, what in the like case he refused to pay. 

6. There is no sin in the world, which God hath punished 
with so great severity and high detestation, as this of dis¬ 
obedience. For the crime of idolatry God sent the sword 
amongst his people ; but it was never heard, that tfie earth 

* Rom. xiii. 4. + 1 Pet. ii. 14. 

O 


% 


134 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


opened and swallowed up any but rebels against their 
prince. 

7. Obedience is better than the particular actions of re¬ 
ligion ; and he serves God better, that follows his prince 
in lawful services, than he, that refuses his command, upon 
pretence he must go say his prayers. But rebellion is com¬ 
pared to that sin, which of all sin seems the most unna¬ 
tural and damned impiety :—“ Rebellion is as the sin of 
witchcraft.” 

8. Obedience is a complicated act of virtue, and many 
graces are exercised in one act of obedience. It is an act 
of humility, of mortification and self-denial, of charity to 
God, of care of the public, of order and charity to our¬ 
selves and all our society, and a great instance of a victory 
over the most refractory and unruly passions. 

9. To be a subject is a greater temporal felicity, than to 
be a king: for all eminent governments according to their 
height have a great burden, huge care, infinite, business, 
little rest, innumerable fears ; and all that he enjoys above 
another, is, that he does enjoy the things of the world with 
other circumstances, and a bigger noise ; and if others go 
at his single command, it is also certain, he must suffer in¬ 
convenience at the needs and disturbances of all his people : 
and the evils of one man and of one family are rot enough 
for him to bear, unless also he be almost crushed with the 
evils of mankind. He therefore is an ungrateful person, 
that will press the scales down with a voluntary load, and, 
by disobedience, put more thorns into the crown or mitre 
of his superior. Much better is the advice of St. Paul; 
“ Obey them that have the rule over you, as they that 
mst give an account for your souls; that they may do it 
vith joy and not with grief: for (besides that it is unplea¬ 
sant to them) it is unprofitable for you.” 

10. The angels are ministering spirits, and perpetually 
:xecute the will and commandment of God : and all the 
vise men and all the good men of the world are obedient 
to their governors ; and the eternal Son of God esteemed it 
his “ meat and drink to do the will of his Father,” and for 
nis obedience alone obtained the greatest glory: and no 
man ever came to perfection but by obedience ; and thou¬ 
sands of saints have chosen such institutions and manners 
of living* in which they might not choose their own work, 
nor follow their own will, nor please themselves, but be ac- 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


135 


countable to others, and subject to discipline, and obedient 
to command ; as knowing this to be the highway of the 
cross, the way that the King of sufferings and humility did 
choose, and so became the king of glory. 

11. No man ever perished, who followed first the will 
of God, and then the will of his superiors: but thousands 
have been damned merely for following their own will, and 
relying upon their own judgments, and choosing their own 
work, and doing their own fancies. For if we begin with 
ourselves, whatsoever seems good in our own eyes, is most 
commonly displeasing in the eyes of God. 

12. The sin of rebellion, though it be a spiritual sin, and 
imitable by devils, yet it is of that disorder, unreasonable¬ 
ness, and impossibility, amongst intelligent spirits, that they 
never murmured or mutinied in their lower stations against 
their superiors. Nay, the good angels of an inferior order 
durst not revile a devil of a higher order. This considera¬ 
tion, which I reckon to be most pressing in the discourses 
of reason, and obliging next to the necessity of a Divine 
precept, we learn from St. Jude, ver. 8, 9. “ Likewise also 
these filthy dreamers despise dominion, and speak evil of 
dignities. And yet Michael the archangel, when, contend¬ 
ing with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, 
durst not bring against him a railing accusation.” 

But because our superiors rule by their example, by 
their word or law, and by the rod, therefore in proportion 
there are several degrees and parts of obedience, of several 
excellencies and degrees towards perfection. 

Degrees of Obedience. 

1. The first is the obedience of the outward work: and 
this is all, that human laws of themselves regard ; for be¬ 
cause man cannot judge the heart, therefore it prescribes 
nothing to it: the public end is served, not by good wishes, 
but by real and actual performances; and, if a man obeys 
against his will, he is not punishable by the laws. 

2. The obedience of the will: and this is also necessary 
in our obedience to human laws, not because man requires 
it for himself, but because God commands it towards man ; 
and of it, although man cannot, yet God will demand an 
account. For we are to do it as to the Lord, and not to 
men ; and therefore we must do it willingly. But by this 
means our obedience in private is secured against secret 


J 36 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


arts and subterfuges: and when we can avoid the punish¬ 
ment, yet we shall not decline our duty, but serve man for 
God’s sake, that is, cheerfully, promptly, vigorously; for 
these are the proper parts of willingness and choice. 

3. The understanding must yield obedience in general, 
though not in the particular instance ; that is, we must be 
firmly persuaded of the excellency of the obedience, though 
we be not bound, in all cases, to think the particular law 
to be most prudent. But, in this, our rule is plain enough. 
Our understanding ought to be inquisitive, whether the 
civil constitution agree with our duty to God ; but we are 
bound to inquire no farther: and therefore beyond this, 
although he, who having no obligation to it (as counsel¬ 
lors have,) inquires not at all into the wisdom or reason 
ableness of the law, be not always the wisest man ; yet he 
is ever the best subject. For when he hath given up his 
understanding to his prince and prelate, provided that his 
duty to God be secured by a precedent search, he hath 
also with the best, and with all the instruments in the world, 
secured his obedience to man. 

SECTION II. 

Of Provision, or that part of Justice, which is due from 
Superiors to Inferiors. 

As God hath imprinted his authority in several parts upon 
several estates of men, as princes, parents, spiritual guides : 
so he hath also delegated and committed parts of his care 
and providence under them, that they may be instrumental 
in the conveying such blessings, which God knows we 
need, and which he intends should be the effect of go¬ 
vernment. For since God governs all the world as a king, 
provides for us as a father, and is the great guide and con¬ 
ductor of our spirits as the head of the church, and the 
great shepherd and bishop of our souls, they, who have 
portions of these dignities, have also their share of the ad¬ 
ministration : the sum of all which is usually signified in 
these two words, governing and feeding, and is particularly 
recited in these following rules. 

Duties of Kings , and all the Supreme Powers, as Lawgivers 

1. Princes of the people, and alt that have legislative 
power, must provide useful and good law.? for the defence 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


137 


of property, for the encouragement of labour, for the 
safe-guard of their persons, for determining controver¬ 
sies, for reward of noble actions and excellent arts and 
rare inventions, for promoting trade, and enriching their 
people. 

2. In the making laws, princes must have regard to the 
public dispositions, to the affections and disaffections of the 
people, and must not introduce a law with public scandal 
and displeasure ; but consider the public benefit, and the 
present capacity of affairs, and general inclinations of men’s 
minds. For he that enforces a law upon a people against 
their first and public apprehensions, tempts them to disobe¬ 
dience, and makes laws to become snares and hooks to catch 
the people, and to enrich the treasury with the spoil and 
tears and curses of the commonalty, and to multiply their 
mutiny and their sin. 

3. Princes must provide that the laws be duly executed ; 
for a good law, without execution, is like an unperformed 
promise : and therefore they must be severe exactors of ac¬ 
counts from their delegates and ministers of justice.. 

4. The severity of laws must be tempered with dispen¬ 
sations, pardons, and remissions, according as the case 
shall alter, and new necessities be introduced, or some 
singular accident shall happen, in which the law would be 
unreasonable or intolerable, as to that particular. And 
thus the people, with their importunity, prevailed against 
Saul in the case of Jonathan, and obtained his pardon for 
breaking the law, which his father made, because his neces¬ 
sity forced him to taste honey; and his breaking the law, 
in that case, did promote that service, whose promotion was 
intended by the law. 

5. Princes must be fathers of the people, and provide 
such instances of gentleness, ease, wealth, and advantages, 
as may make mutual confidence between them ; and must 
fix their security under God in the love of the people: 
which therefore they must, with all arts of sweetness, re¬ 
mission, popularity, nobleness, and sincerity, endeavour to 
secure to themselves. 

6. Princes must not multiply public oaths without great, 
eminent, and violent necessity; lest the security of the 
king become a snare to the people, and they become false, 
when they see themselves suspected; or impatient, when 
they are violently held fast: but the greater and more use-* 

o 2 


138 


OF OBEDIENCE. 


ful caution is upon things than upon persons: and if se¬ 
curity of kings can be obtained otherwise, it is better that 
oaths should be the last refuge, and when nothing else 
can be sufficient. 

7. Let not the people be tempted with arguments to dis¬ 
obey, by the imposition of great and unnecessary taxes ; 
for that lost to the son of Solomon the dominion of the ten 
tribes of Israel. 

8. Princes must, in a special manner, be guardians of 
pupils and widows, not suffering their persons to be op¬ 
pressed, or their estates imbeciled, or in any sense be ex¬ 
posed to the rapine of covetous persons ; but be provided 
for by just laws, and provident judges, and good guardians, 
ever having an ear ready open to their just complaints, and 
a heart full of pity, one hand to support them, and the other 
to avenge them. 

9. Princes must provide, that the laws may be so admin¬ 
istered, that they be truly and really an ease to the peo¬ 
ple, not an instrument of vexation: and therefore must be 
careful, that the shortest and most equal ways of trials be 
appointed, fees moderated, and intricacies and windings as 
much cut off as may be, lest injured persons be forced to 
perish under the oppression, or under the law, in the injury, 
or in the suit. Laws are like princes, those best and most 
beloved, who are most easy of access. 

10. Places of judicature ought, at no hand, to be sold by 
pious princes, who remember themselves to be fathers of 
the people. For they that buy the office, will sell the act; 
and they that, at any rate, will be judges, will not, at any 
easy rate, do justice; and their bribery is less punishable, 
when bribery opened the door by which they entered. 

11. Ancient privileges, favours, customs, and acts of grace 
indulged by former kings to their people, must not, with¬ 
out high reason and great necessities, be revoked by their 
successors, nor forfeitures be exacted violently, nor penal 
laws urged rigorously, nor in light cases ; nor laws be mul¬ 
tiplied without great need ; nor vicious persons, which are 
publicly and deservedly hated, be kept in defiance of popular 
desires; nor any thing, that may unnecessarily make the 
yoke heavy and the affection light, that may increase mur¬ 
murs and lessen charity ; always remembering, that the 
interest of the prince and the people is so enfolded in a 
«autual embrace, that they cannot be untwisted without 


THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS. 


130 

pulling a limb off, or dissolving the bands and conjunction 
of the whole body. 

12. All princes must esteem themselves as much bound 
by their word, by their grants, and by their promises, as 
the meanest of their subjects are by the restraint and pe¬ 
nalty of laws : and although they are superior to the peo¬ 
ple, yet they are not superior to their own voluntary con¬ 
cessions and engagements, their promises and oaths, when 
once they are passed from them. 

The Duty of Superiors as they are Judges. 

1. Princes in judgment and their delegate judges must 
judge the causes of all persons uprightly and impartially, 
without any personal consideration of the power of the 
mighty, or the bribe of the rich, or the needs of the poor. 
For although the poor must fare no worse for his poverty, 
yet, in justice, he must fare no better for it: and although 
the rich must be no more regarded, yet he must not be 
less. And to this purpose the tutor of Cyrus instructed 
him, when, in a controversy where a great boy would have 
taken a large coat from a little boy, because his own was 
too little for him, and the other’s was too big, he adjudged 
the great coat to the great boy : his tutor answered, “ Sir, 
if you were made a judge of decency or fitness, you had 
judged well in giving the biggest to the biggest; but when 
you are appointed to judge, not whom the coat did fit, but 
whose it was, you should have considered the title and the 
possession, who did the violence, and who made it, or who 
bought it.” And so it must be in judgments between the 
rich and the poor: it is not to be considered what the poor 
man needs, but what is his own. 

2. A prince may not, much less may inferior judges, 
leny justice, when it is legally and competently demanded: 
ind if the prince will use his prerogative in pardoning an 
offender, against whom justice is required, he must be care¬ 
ful to give satisfaction to the injured person, or his rela¬ 
tives, by some other instrument; and be watchful to take 
away the scandal, that is, lest such indulgence might 
make persons more bold to do injury : and if he spares the 
life, let him change the punishment into that, which may 
make the offender, if not suffer justice, yet do justice, and 
more real advantage to the injured person. 

These rules concern princes and their delegates in the 


140 


THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS. 


making or administering laws, in the appointing rules 01 
justice, and doing acts of judgment. The duty ot parents to 
their children and nephews is briefly described by St. Paul. 

The Duty of Parents to their Children. 

1. “Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath:”* 
that is, be tender-bowelled, pitiful, and gentle, complying 
with all the infirmities of the children, and, in their several 
ages, proportioning to them several usages, according to 
their needs and their capacities. 

2. “ Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of 
the Lordthat is, secure their religion ; season their 
younger years with prudent and pious principles ; make 
them in love with virtue ; and make them habitually so, 
before they come to choose or to discern good from evil, 
that their choice may be with less difficulty and danger. 
For while they are under discipline, they suck in all that 
they are first taught, and believe it infinitely. Provide for 
them wise, learned, and virtuous tutors, and good company 
and discipline, seasonable baptism, catechism, and confirm¬ 
ation. For it is great folly to heap up much wealth for 
our children, and not to take care concerning the children, 
for whom we get it. It is as if a man should take more care 
about his shoe than about his foot. 

3. Parents must show piety at home ;f that is, they 
must give good example and reverend deportment in 
the face of their children ; and all those instances of cha¬ 
rity, which usually endear each other, sweetness of con¬ 
versation, affability, frequent admonition, all significations 
of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, must be ex¬ 
pressed towards children, that they may look upon their 
parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and 
sanctuary, their treasure and their guide. Hither is to be 
reduced the nursing of children, which is the first, and 
most natural, and necessary instance of piety, which mo¬ 
thers can show to their babes ; a duty, from which nothing 
will excuse, but a disability, sickness, danger, or public 
necessity. 

4. Parents must provide for their own, according to 
their condition, education, and employment: called by St. 
Paul, “ a laying up for the children,”^; that is, an en¬ 
abling them, by competent portions, or good trades, arts, or 

* Ephes. vi. 4. + Heb. xii 9. 1 Tim. v. 4. ' \ 1 Tirn. v. 1. 


THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS. 


141 


learning”, to defend themselves against the chances of the 
world, that they may not be exposed to temptation, to beg¬ 
gary, or unworthy arts. And although this must be done 
without covetousness, without impatient and greedy de¬ 
sires of making them rich; yet it must be done with much 
care and great affection, with all reasonable provision, and 
according to our power: and if we can, without sin, improve 
cur estates for them, that also is part of the duty we owe 
to God for them. And this rule is to extend to all that 
descend from us, although we have been overtaken in a 
fault, and have unlawful issue ; they also become part of 
our care, yet so as not to injure the production of the law¬ 
ful bed. 

5. This duty is to extend to a provision of conditions and 
an estate of life. Parents must, according to their power 
and reason, provide husbands or wives for their children. 
In which they must secure piety and religion, and the af¬ 
fection and love of the interested persons; and after these, 
let them make what provisions they can, for other conveni¬ 
ences or advantages; ever remembering, that they can do 
no injury more afflictive to the children, than to join them 
with cords of a disagreeing affection ; it is like tying a wolf 
and a lamb, or planting the vine in a garden of coleworts 
Let them be persuaded with reasonable inducements to make 
them willing, and to choose according to the parent’s wish; 
but, at no hand, let them be forced. Better to sit up all 
night, than to go to bed with a dragon. 

Rules for Married Persons. 

1. Husbands must give to their wives love, maintenance, 
duty, and the sweetness of conversation ; and wives must 
pay to them all they have, or can, with the interest of obe¬ 
dience and reverence: and they must be complicated in 
affections and interest, that there be no distinction be¬ 
tween them of mine and thine. And if the title be the 
man’s, or the woman’s, yet the use must be common; only 
the wisdom of the man is to regulate all extravagancies and 
indiscretions. In other things, no question is to be made ; 
and their goods should be as their children, not to be di¬ 
vided, but of one possession and provision : whatsoever is 
otherwise, is not marriage, but merchandise. And, upon 
this ground, I suppose, it was, that St. Basil commended 
that woman, who^took part of her husband’s goods, to do 


142 


THE DUTY OF SUPERIORS. 


good works withal: for supposing him to be unwilling, and 
that tile work was his duty or hers alone, or both theirs in 
conjunction, or of great advantage to either of their souls, 
and no violence to the support of their families, she hath 
right to all that: and Abigail, of her own right, made a 
costly present to David, when her husband Nabal had re¬ 
fused it. The husband must rule over his wife, as the soul 
does over the body, obnoxious to the same sufferings, and 
bound by the same affections, and doing or suffering by 
the permissions and interest of each other: that (as the old 
philosopher said) as the humours of the body are mingled 
with each other in the whole substances, so marriage may 
be a mixture of interests, of bodies, of minds, of friends, a 
conjunction of the whole life, and the noblest of friend¬ 
ships. But if, after all the fair deportments and innocent 
chaste compliances, the husband be morose and ungentle, 
let the wife discourse thus: “ If while I do my duty, my 
husband neglects me ; what will he do, if I neglect him ?” 
And if she thinks to be separated by reason of her hus¬ 
band’s unchaste life, let her consider, that then the man 
will be incurably ruined, and her rivals could wish nothing 
more, than that they might possess him alone. 

The Duty of Masters of Families. 

1. The same care is to extend to all of our family, in 
their proportions, as to our children : for as, by St. Paul’s 
economy, the heir differs nothing from a servant, while he 
is in minority, so a servant should differ nothing from a child 
in the substantial part of the care; and the difference is 
only in degrees. Servants and masters are of the same 
kindred, of the same nature, and heirs of the same pro¬ 
mises; and therefore, 1. Must be provided of necessaries 
for their support and maintenance. 2. They must be used 
with mercy. 3. Their work must be tolerable and merci¬ 
ful. 4. Their restraints must be reasonable. 5. Their 
recreations fitting and healthful. 6. Their religion and 
the interest of souls taken care of. 7. And masters must 
correct their servants with gentleness, prudence, and 
mercy ; not for every slight fault, not always, not with up¬ 
braiding and disgraceful language, but with such only as 
may express and reprove the fault, and amend the person. 
But in all these things, measures are to be taken by the 
contract made, by the laws and customs ^>f the place, by 


OF CIVIL CONTRACTS 


143 


the sentence of prudent and merciful men, and by the cau¬ 
tions and remembrances given us by God ; such as is that 
written by St Paul, “ as knowing that we also have a Mas¬ 
ter in heaven.” The master must not be a lion in his house, 
lest hTs power be obeyed, and his person hated ; his eye be 
waited on, and his business be neglected in secret. No ser¬ 
vant will do his duty, unless he make a conscience, or love 
his master : if he does it not for God’s sake or his master’s, 
he will not need to do it always for his own. 

The Duty of Guardians or Tutors. 

Tutors and guardians are in the place of parents ; and 
what they are in fiction of law, they must remember as an 
argument to engage them to do in reality of duty. They 
must do all the duty of parents, excepting those obligations 
which are merely natural. 

IT The duty of ministers and spiritual guides to the people 
is of so great burden, so various rules, so intricate and 
busy caution, that it requires a distinct tractate by itself. 

SECTION III. 

Of Negotiation, or Civil Contracts. 

This part of justice is such as depends upon the laws of 
man directly, and upon the laws of God only by conse¬ 
quence and indirect reason; and from civil laws or private 
agreements it is to take its estimate and measures: and 
although our duty is plain and easy, requiring of us ho¬ 
nesty in contracts, sincerity in affirming, simplicity in bar¬ 
gaining, and faithfulness in performing; yet it may be 
helped by the addition of these following rules and consi¬ 
derations. 

j Rules and Measures of Justice in Bargaining. 

1. In making contracts, use not many words ; for all the 
business of a bargain is summed up in a few sentences; and 
he that speaks least, means fairest, as having fewer oppor¬ 
tunities to deceive. 

2. Lie not at all, neither in a little thing nor in a great, 
neither in the substance nor in the circumstance, neither 
in word nor deed: that is, pretend not what is false ; cover 
not what is true; and let the measure of your affirmation 
or denial be the understanding of your contractor; for he 
that deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking what is 


144 


OF CIVIL CONTRACTS. 


true in a sense not intended or understood by the other, is 
a liar and a thief. For, in bargains, you are to avoid no 
only what is false, but that also which deceives. 

3. In prices of bargaining, concerning - uncertain mer 
chandise, you may buy as cheap, ordinarily, as you can 
and sell as dear as you can, so it be, 1, without violence 
and 2, when you contract on equal terms with persons in 
all senses (as to the matter and skill of bargaining) equal 
to yourself, that is, merchants with merchants, wise men 
with wise men, rich with rich; and, 3, when there is no de¬ 
ceit, and no necessity, and no monopoly : for in these cases, 
viz. when the contractors are equal, and no advantage on 
either side, both parties are voluntary, and therefore there 
can be no injustice or wrong to either. But then add also 
this consideration, that the public be not oppressed by un¬ 
reasonable and unjust rates ; for which, the following rules 
are the best measure. 

4. Let your prices be according to that measure of 
good and evil, which is established in the fame and com¬ 
mon accounts of the wisest and most merciful men, skilled 
in that manufacture or commodity; and the gain such, 
which, without scandal, is allowed to persons in all the same 
circumstances. 

5. Let no prices be heightened by the necessity or un¬ 
skilfulness of the contractor; for the first is direct uncha¬ 
ritableness to the person, and injustice in the thing; be¬ 
cause the man’s necessity could not naturally enter into the 
consideration of the value of the commodity; and the other 
is deceit and oppression : much less must any man make 
necessities; as by engrossing a commodity, by monopoly, 
by detaining corn, or the like indirect arts; for such per¬ 
sons are unjust to all single persons, with whom, in such 
cases, they contract, and oppressors of the public. 

6. In intercourse with others, do not do all, which you 
may lawfully do; but keep something within thy powder, 
and, because there is a latitude of gain in buying and sell¬ 
ing, take not thou the utmost penny that is lawful, or which 
thou thinkest so ; for although it be lawful, yet it is not safe , 
and he that gains all, that he can gain lawfully, this year, 
possibly, next year, will be tempted to gain something un¬ 
lawfully. 

7. He that sells dearer by reason he sells not for ready 
money, must increase his price no higher, than to make 


OF CIVIL CONTRACTS. 


145 

himself recompense for the loss, which, according to the 
rules of trade, he sustained by his forbearance, according 
to common computation, reckoning in also the hazard, 
which he is prudently, "Warily, and charitably, to estimate. 
But although this be the measure of his justice, yet be¬ 
cause it happens either to their friends, or to necessitous 
and poor persons, they are, in these cases, to consider the 
rules of friendship and neighbourhood, and the obligations 
of charity, lest justice turn into unmercifulness. 

8. No man is to be raised in his price or rents in regard 
of any accident, advantage, or disadvantage, of his person. 
A prince must be used conscionably, as well as a common 
person ; and a beggar be treated justly, as well as a prince; 
with this only difference, that, to poor persons, the utmost 
measure and extent of justice is unmerciful, which, to a 
rich person, is innocent, because it is just; and he needs not 
thy mercy and remission. 

9. Let no man, for his own poverty, become more op¬ 
pressing and cruel in his bargain, but quietly, modestly, 
diligently, and patiently, recommend his estate to God, and 
follow its interest, and leave the success to him : for such 
courses will more probably advance his trade; they will 
certainly procure him a blessing and a recompense : and, 
if they cure not his poverty, they will take away the evil of 
it; and there is nothing else in it, that can trouble him. 

10. Detain not the wages of the hireling; for every de¬ 
gree of detention of it beyond the time is injustice and un¬ 
charitableness, and grinds his face, till tears and blood 
come out: but pay him exactly according to covenant, or 
according to his needs. 

11. Religiously keep all promises and covenants, though 
made to your disadvantage, though afterward you per¬ 
ceive you might have done bdtter: and let not any prece¬ 
dent act of yours be altered by any after-accident. Let 
nothing make you break your promise, unless it be unlaw¬ 
ful or impossible ; that is, either out of your natural, or 
out of your civil power, yourself being under the power of 
another; or that it be intolerably inconvenient to yourself, 
and of no advantage to another; or that you have leave 
expressed, or reasonably presumed. 

12. Let no man take wages or fees for a work, that he 
cannot do, or cannot with probability undertake, or in some 
sense profitably, and with ease, or with advantage manage. 

P 


146 


OF CIVIL CONTRACTS. 


Physicians must not meddle with desperate diseases, and 
known to be incurable, without declaring their sense be¬ 
fore-hand ; that if the patient please, he may entertain him 
at adventure, or to do him some little ease. Advocates 
must deal plainly with their clients, and tell them the true 
state and danger of their case ; and must not pretend con¬ 
fidence in an evil cause ; but when he hath so cleared his 
own innocence, if the client will have collateral and legal 
advantages obtained by his industry, he may engage his 
endeavour, provided he do no injury to the right cause, or 
any man’s person. 

13. Let no man appropriate to his own use, what God, 
by a special mercy, or the republic, hath made common ; 
for that is both against justice and charity too: and, by 
miraculous accidents, God hath declared his displeasure 
against such enclosure. When the kings of Naples en¬ 
closed the gardens of CEnotria, when the best manna of 
Calabria descends, that no man might gather it without 
paying tribute, the manna ceased, till the tribute was taken 
off; and then it came again: and so, when after the third 
trial, the princes found they could not have that in proper, 
which God made to be common, they left it as free as God 
gave it. The like happened in Epire, when Lysimachus 
laid an impost upon the Tragasaean salt, it vanished, till 
Lysimachus left it public. And when the procurators of 
king Antigonus imposed a rate upon the sick people, that 
came to Edepsum to drink the waters, which were lately 
sprung, and were very healthful, instantly the waters dried 
up, and the hope*)f gain perished. 

The sum of all is in these words of St. Paul, “ Let no 
man go beyond and defraud his brother, in any matter ; 
because the Lord is the avenger of all such.”* And our 
blessed Saviour, in the enumerating the duties of justice, 
besides the commandment of “ Do not steal,” adds, “ De¬ 
fraud not,”f forbidding (as a distinct explication of the old 
law) the tacit and secret theft of abusing our brother in 
civil contracts. And it needs no other argument to en¬ 
force this caution, but only, that the Lord hath undertaken 
to avenge all such persons. And as he always does it in 
the great day of recompenses ; so very often he does it 
here, by making the unclean portion of injustice to be as a 
canker-worm eating up all the other increase: it procures 
* 1 Thess. iv. 6. t Lev. xix. 13. 1 Cor. vi. 8. Mat. x. 19. 


OF RESTITUTION. 


14 


beggary, and a declining estate, or a caitiff’cursed spirit, an 
ill name, the curse of the injured and oppressed person, and 
a fool or a prodigal to be his heir. 

SECTION IV. 

Of Restitution. 

Restitution is that part of justice, to which a man is 
obliged by a precedent contract, or a foregoing fault, by 
his own act or another man’s, either with or without his 
will. He that borrows, is bound to pay, and much more 
he that steals or cheats. For if he that borrows, and pays 
not when he is able, be an unjust person and a robber, be¬ 
cause he possesses another man’s goods, to the right 
owner’s prejudice ; then he, that took them at first without 
leave, is the same thing in every instant of his possession, 
which the debtor is after the time, in which he should, and 
could, have made payment. For, in all sins, we are to dis¬ 
tinguish the transient or passing act from the remaining 
effect or evil. The act of stealing was soon over, and can¬ 
not be undone: and for it the sinner is only answerable to 
God, or his vicegerent; and he is, in a particular manner, 
appointed to expiate it by suffering punishment, and re¬ 
penting, and asking pardon, and judging and condemning 
himself, doing acts of justice and charity, in opposition and 
contradiction to that evil action. But because, in the case 
of stealing, there is an injury done to our neighbour ; and 
the evil still remains after the action is past; therefore for 
this we are accountable to our neighbour, and we are to 
take the evil off from him, which we brought upon him; or 
else he is an injured person, a sufferer all the while ; and 
that any man should be the worse for me, and my direct 
act, and by my intention, is against the rule of equity, of 
justice, and of charity; I do not that to others, which I 
would have done to myself; for I grow richer upon the 
ruins of his fortune. Upon this ground, it is a determined 
rule in divinity, “ Our sin can never be pardoned, till we 
have restored what we unjustly took, or wrongfully detain 
restored it (I mean) actually, or in purpose and desire, which 
we must really perform, when we can. And this doctrine, 
besides its evident and apparent reasonableness, is derived 
from the express words of Scripture, reckoning restitution 
to be a part of repentance necessary in order to the remis¬ 
sion of our sins. “ If the wicked restore the pledge, give 


£48 


OF RESTITUTION. 


again that he had robbed, &c. he shall surely live, he shall 
not die.”* The practice of this part of justice is to be di¬ 
rected by the following rules. 

Rules of making Restitution. 

1. Whosoever is an effective real cause of doing his 
neighbour wrong, by what instrument soever he does it, 
(whether by commanding, or encouraging it, by coun¬ 
selling, or commending it, by acting it, or not hindering it, 
when he might and ought, by concealing it or receiving it,) 
is bound to make restitution to his neighbour ; if, without 
him, the injury had not been done, but, by him or his as¬ 
sistance, it was. For, by the same reason, that every one 
of these is guilty of the sin, and is cause of the injury, by 
the same they are bound to make reparation ; because by 
him his neighbour is made wgrse, and therefore is to be 
put into that state, from whence he was forced. And sup¬ 
pose that thou hast persuaded an injury to be done to thy 
neighbour, which others would have persuaded, if thou 
hadst not, yet thou art still obliged, because thou really 
didst cause the injury; just as they had been obliged, if 
they had done it: and thou art not at all the less bound, by 
having persons as ill-inclined as thou wert. 

2. He, that commanded the injury to be done, is first 
bound; then he, that did it; and after these, they also are 
obliged, who did so assist, as without them the thing would 
not have been done. If satisfaction be made by any of the 
former, the latter is tied to repentance, but no restitution: 
but if the injured person be not righted, every one of them 
is wholly guilty of the injustice; and therefore bound to 
restitution, singly and entirely. 

3. Whosoever intends a little injury to his neighbour, 
and acts it, and by it a greater evil accidentally comes, he 
is obliged to make an entire reparation of all the injury, of 
that, which he intended; and of that, which he intended 
not, but yet acted by his own instrument going further 
than he at first proposed it. He that set fire on a plane- 
tree to spite his neighbour, and the plane-tree set fire on 
his neighbour’s house, is bound to pay for all the loss, be¬ 
cause it did all rise from his own ill intention. It is like 
murder, committed by a drunken person, involuntary in 
some of the effect, but voluntary in the other parts of it, 

* Ezek. xxxiii. 15. 


OF RESTITUTION. 


149 

and in all the cause ; and therefore the guilty person is 
answerable for all of it. And when Ariarathes, the Cap. 
padocian king, had, but in wantonness, stopped the mouth 
of the river Melanus, although he intended no evil, yet 
Euphrates being swelled by that means, and bearing away 
some of the strand of Cappadocia, did great spoil to the Phry¬ 
gians and Galatians; he, therefore, by the Roman senate, 
was condemned in three hundred talents, towards reparation 
of the damage. Much rather, therefore, when the lesser 
part of the evil was directly intended. 

4. He, that hinders a charitable person from giving alms 
to a poor man, is tied to restitution, if he hindered him by 
fraud or violence; because it was a right which the poor 
man had, when the good man had designed and resolved 
it, and the fraud or violence hinders the effect, but not the 
purpose ; and therefore he, who used the deceit or the force, 
is injurious, and did damage to the poor man. But if the 
alms were hindered only by entreaty, the hinderer is not 
tied to restitution, because entreaty took not liberty away 
from the giver, but left him still master of his own act, and 
he had power to alter his purpose, and so long there was no 
injustice done. The same is the case of a testator giving a 
legacy, either by kindness, or by promise, and common 
right. He, that hinders the charitable legacy by fraud or 
violence, or the due legacy by entreaty, is equally obliged 
to restitution. The reason of the latter part of this case is, 
because he, that entreats or persuades to a sin, is as guilty 
as he that acts it: and if, without his persuasion, the sin 
and the injury would not be acted, he is in his kind the 
entire cause, and therefore obliged to repair the injury, as 
much as the person that does the wrong immediately. 

5. He that refuses to do any part of his duty (to which 
he is otherwise obliged) without a bribe, is bound to re¬ 
store that money, because he took it in his neighbour’s 
wrong, and not as a salary for his labour, or a reward for 
his wisdom (for his stipend hath paid all that,) or he hath 
obliged himself to do it by his voluntary undertaking. 

6. He that takes any thing from his neighbour, which 
was justly forfeited, but yet takes it not as a minister of 
justice, but to satisfy his own revenge or avarice, is tied to 
repentance, but not to restitution. For my neighbour is 
not the worse for my act, for thither the law and his own 
demerits bore him; but because I took the forfeiture indi- 

p 2 


OF RESTITUTION. 


150 

rectly, I am answerable to God for my unhandsome, unjust, 
or uncharitable circumstances. Thus Philip of Macedon 
was reproved by Aristides for destroying the Phocenses; 
because although they deserved it, yet he did it not in pro¬ 
secution of the law of nations, but to enlarge his own do¬ 
minions. 

7. The heir of an obliged person is not bound to make 
restitution, if the obligation passed only by a personal act; 
but, if it passed from his person to his estate, then the 
estate passes with all its burden. If the father, by per¬ 
suading his neighbour to do injustice, be bound to restore, 
the action is extinguished by the death of the father, be¬ 
cause it was only the father’s sin that bound him, which 
cannot directly bind the son : therefore the son is free. 
And this is so in all personal actions, unless where the civil 
law interposes and alters the case. 

IT These rules concern the persons that are obliged to make 

restitution: the other circumstances of it are thus 

described. 

8. He, that by fact, or word, or sign, either fraudulently, 
or violently, does hurt to his neighbour’s body, life, goods, 
good name, friends, or soul, is bound to make restitution 
in the several instances, according as they are capable to 
be made. In all these instances, we must separate en¬ 
treaty and enticements from deceit or violence. If I per¬ 
suade my neighbour to commit adultery, I still leave him 
or her in their own power: and though I am answerable to 
God for my sin, yet not to my neighbour. For I made her 
to be willing; yet she was willing, that is, the same at 
last, as I was at first. But if I have used fraud, and made 
her to believe a lie, upon which confidence she did the act, 
and, without, she would not (as if I tell a woman, her hus¬ 
band is dead, or intended to kill her, or is himself an adul¬ 
terous man,) or if I use violence, that is, either force her, 
or threaten her with death, or a grievous wound, or any 
thing, that takes her from the liberty of her choice, I am 
bound to restitution ; that is, to restore her to a right un¬ 
derstanding of things and to a full liberty, by taking from 
her the deceit or the violence. 

9. An adulterous person is tied to restitution of the in¬ 
jury, so far as it is reparable,* and can be made to the 
wronged person ; that is, to make provision for the chil- 


OF RESTITUTION. 


151 

dren begotten in unlawful embraces, that they may do no 
injury to the legitimate, by receiving a common portion; 
and, if the injured person do account of it, he must satisfy 
him with money, for the wrong done to his bed. He is 
not tied to offer this, because it is no proper exchange ; 
but he is bound to pay, if it be reasonably demanded : for 
every man hath justice done him, when himself is satisfied, 
though by a word, or an action, or a penny. 

10. He that hath killed a man, is bound to restitution, 
by allowing such a maintenance to the children and near 
relatives of the deceased, as they have lost by his death, 
considering and allowing for all circumstances of the man’s 
age, and health, and probability of living. And thus Her¬ 
cules is said to have made expiation for the death of Iphi- 
tus, whom he slew, by paying a mulct to his children. 

11. He that hath really lessened the fame of his neigh¬ 
bour by fraud or violence, is bound to restore it by its proper 
instruments; such as are confession of his fault, giving 
testimony of his innocence or worth, doing him honour, or 
(if that will do it, and both parties agree) by money, which 
answers all things. 

12. He that hath wounded his neighbour, is tied to the 
expenses of the surgeon and other incidences, and to repair 
whatever loss he sustains by his disability to work or trade ; 
and the same is in the case of false imprisonment; in which 
cases only the real effect and remaining detriment are to 
be mended and repaired: for the action itself is to be pu¬ 
nished or repented of, and enters not into the question of 
restitution. But, in these and all other cases, the injured 
person is to be restored to that perfect and good condition, 
from which he was removed by my fraud or violence, so far 
as is possible. Thus a ravisher must repair the temporal 
detriment or injury done to the maid, and give her a dowry, 
or marry her, if she desire it. For this restores her into 
that capacity of being a good wife, which by the injury was 
lost, as far as it can be done. 

13. He, that robbeth his neighbour of his goods, or de¬ 
tains any thing violently or fraudulently, is bound not only 
to restore the principal, but all its fruits and emoluments, 
which would have accrued, to the right owner, during the 
time of their being detained. By proportion to these rulesj 
we may judge of the obligation that lies upon all sorts of 
injurious persons: the sacrilegious, the detainers of tithes. 


152 


OF RESTITUTION. 


cheaters of men’s inheritances, unjust judges, false witnesses 
and accusers; those, that do fraudulently or violently bring 
men to sin, that force men to drink, that laugh at and dis¬ 
grace virtue, that persuade servants to run away, or com¬ 
mend such purposes; violent persecutors of religion in any 
instance; and all of the same nature. 

14. He, that hath wronged so many, or in that manner 
(as in the way of daily trade,) that he knows not in what 
measure he hath done it, or who they are, must redeem his 
fault by alms and largesses to the poor, according to the 
value of his wrongful dealing, as near as he can proportion 
it. Better it is to go begging to heaven, than to go to hell, 
laden with the spoils of rapine and injustice. 

15. The order of paying the debts of contract or restitu¬ 
tion, is, in some instances, set down by the civil laws of a 
kingdom, in which cases, their rule is to be observed. In 
destitution or want of such rules, we are, 1, to observe the 
necessity of the creditor; 2, then the time of the delay; 
and 3, the special obligations of friendship or kindness; 
and according to these, in their several degrees, make our 
restitution, if we be not able to do all that we should; but, 
if we be, the best rule is, to do it so soon as we can ; taking 
our accounts in this, as in our human actions, according to 
prudence, and civil or natural conveniences or possi¬ 
bilities; only securing these two things: 1. That the duty 
be not wholly omitted; and, 2. That it be not deferred 
at all out of covetousness, or any other principle that is 
vicious. Remember, that the same day, in which Zaccheus 
made restitution to all whom he had injured, the same day 
Christ himself pronounced, that salvation was come to his 
house.* 

16. But, besides the obligation arising from contract or 
default, there is one of another sort, which comes from kind¬ 
ness, and the acts of charity and friendship. He, that does 
me a favour, hath bound me to make him a return of thank 
fulness. The obligation comes not by covenant; not by his 
own express intention, but by the nature of the thing; and is 
a duty springing up within the spirit of the obliged per¬ 
son, to whom it is more natural to love his friend, and to 
do good for good, than to return evil for evil; because a 
man may forgive an injury, but he must never forget a 
good turn. For every thing that is excellent, and every 

* Luke xix. 9. 


PRAYERS, ETC. 


153 

thing that is profitable, whatsoever is good in itself, or good 
to me, cannot but be beloved; and what we love, we na¬ 
turally cherish, and do good to. He, therefore, that refuses 
to do good to them, whom he is bound to love, or to love 
that which did him good, is unnatural and monstrous in his 
affections, and thinks all the world born to minister to him, 
with a greediness worse than that of the sea : which although 
it receives all rivers into itself, yet it furnishes the clouds 
and springs with a return of all they need. 

Our duty to benefactors is to esteem and love their per¬ 
sons ; to make them proportionable returns of service, or 
duty, or profit, according as we can, or as they need, or 
as opportunity presents itself, and according to the great¬ 
nesses of their kindness, and to pray to God to make them 
recompense for all the goods they have done to us; which 
last office is also requisite to be done for our creditors, who, 
in charity, have relieved our wants. 


Prayers to be said in relation to the several obligations 
and offices of Justice. 


A Prayer for the Grace of Obedience , to be said by all 
Persons under command. 

O eternal God, great ruler of men and angels, who hast 
constituted all things in a w r onderful order, making all the 
creatures subject to man, and one man to another, and all 
to thee, the last link of this admirable chain being fastened 
to the foot of thy throne; teach me to obey all those, 
whom thou hast set over me, reverencing their persons, sub¬ 
mitting indifferently to all their lawful commands, cheer¬ 
fully undergoing those burdens which the public wisdom 
and necessity shall impose upon me ; at no hand murmur¬ 
ing against government, lest the spirit of pride and mutiny, 
of murmur and disorder, enter into me, and consign me to 
the portion of the disobedient and rebellious, of the des- 
pisers of dominion, and revilers of dignity. Grant this, O 
holy God, for his sake, who, for his obedience to the Father, 
hath obtained the glorification of eternal ages, our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Prayers for Kings and all Magistrates, for our Parents , 
spiritual and natural , are in the following Litanies , at the 
end of the fourth Chapter. 


PRAYERS RELATING TO 


154 

A Prayer to be said by Subjects , when tlieir Land is inva¬ 
ded and overrun by barbarous or wicked People , enemies 

of the Religion or the Government. 

I. 

O eternal God, thou alone rulest the kingdoms of men ; 
thou art the great God of battles and recompenses; and by 
thy glorious wisdom, by thy almighty power, and by 
thy secret providence, dost determine the events of waL 
and the issues of human counsels, and the returns of peace 
and victory : now at last be pleased to let the light of thy 
countenance, and the effects of a glorious mercy and a gra¬ 
cious pardon, return to this land. Thou seest, how great 
evils we suffer under the power and tyranny of war; and, 
although we submit to and adore thy justice in our suffer¬ 
ings, yet be pleased to pity our misery, to hear our com¬ 
plaints, and to provide us of remedy against our present ca¬ 
lamities: let not the defenders of a righteous cause go away 
ashamed, nor our counsels be for ever confounded, nor our 
parties defeated, nor religion suppressed, nor learning dis¬ 
countenanced, and we be spoiled of all the exterior orna¬ 
ments, instruments, and advantages of piety, which thou 
hast been pleased formerly to minister to our infirmities, for 
the interest of learning and religion. Amen. 

II. 

We confess, dear God, that we have deserved to be to¬ 
tally extinct and separate from the communion of saints, 
and the comforts of religion, to be made servants to igno¬ 
rant, unjust, and inferior persons, or to suffer any other 
calamity, which thou shalt allot us as the instrument of thy 
anger, whom we have so often provoked to w T rath and jea¬ 
lousy. Lord, we humbly lie down under the burden of thy 
rod, begging of thee to remember our infirmities, and no 
more to remember our sins, to support us with thy staff, to 
lift us up with thy hand, to refresh us with thy gracious eye; 
and, if a sad cloud of temporal infelicities must still encir¬ 
cle us, open unto us the window of heaven, that, with an 
eye of faith and hope, we may see beyond the cloud, look¬ 
ing upon those mercies, which in thy secret providence and 
admirable wisdom, thou designest to all thy servants, from 
such unlikely and sad beginnings. Teach us diligently 
to do all our duty, and cheerfully to submit to all thy will 
and, at last, be gracious to thy people, that call upon thee 


THE DUTIES OF JUSTICE. 


155 

that put their trust in thee, that have laid up all their hopes 
in the bosom of God, that, besides thee, have no helper. 
Amen. 

III. 

Place a guard of angels about the person of the king, 
and immure him with the defence of thy right hand, that 
no unhallowed arm may do violence to him. Support 
him with aids from heaven in all his battles, trials, and 
dangers ; that he may, in every instance of his temptation, 
become dearer to thee ; and do thou return to him with 
mercy and deliverance. Give unto him the hearts of all 
his people ; and put into his hand a prevailing rod of iron 
a sceptre of power, and a sword of justice ; and enable him 
to defend and comfort the churches under his protection. 

IV. 

Bless all his friends, relatives, confederates, and lieges ; 
direct their counsels, unite their hearts, strengthen their 
hands, bless their actions. Give unto them holiness of 
intention, that they may, with much candour and ingenu¬ 
ity, pursue the cause of God and the king. Sanctify all 
the means and instruments of their purposes, that they 
may not, with cruelty, injustice, or oppression, proceed 
towards the end of their just desires : and do thou crown 
all their endeavours with a prosperous event, that all may 
co-operate to, and actually produce, those great mercies, 
which we beg of thee ; honour and safety to our sovereign, 
defence of his just rights, peace to his people, establish¬ 
ment and promotion to religion, advantages and encour¬ 
agement to learning and holy living, deliverance to all the 
oppressed, comfort to all thy faithful people, and from all 
these, glory to thy holy name. Grant this, O King of kings, 
for his sake, by whom thou hast consigned us to all thy 
mercies and promises, and to whom thou hast given all pow¬ 
er in heaven and earth, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 
Amen. 

A Prayer to be said by Kings or Magistrates, for 
themselves and their People. 

O my God and King, thou rulest in the kingdoms of 
men : by thee kings reign, and princes decree justice: 
thou hast appointed me under thyself [ and under my prince*] 
to govern this portion of thy church, according to the laws 

* These words to be added by a delegate or inferior. 


156 


PRAYERS RELATING TO 


of religion and the commonwealth. O Lord, I am but an 
infirm man, and know not how to decree certain sentences 
without erring in judgment; but do thou give to thy servant 
an understanding heart to judge this people, that I may dis¬ 
cern between good and evil. Cause me to walk, before 
thee and all the people, in truth and righteousness, and 
in sincerity of heart, that I may not regard the person of 
the mighty, nor be afraid of his terror, nor despise the 
person of the poor, and reject his petition ; but that, doing 
justice to all men, I, and my people, may receive mercy of 
thee, peace and plenty in our days, and mutual love, duty, 
and correspondence ; that there be no leading into capti¬ 
vity, no complaining in our streets; but we may see the 
church in prosperity all our days, and religion established 
and increasing. Do thou establish the house of thy ser¬ 
vant, and bring me to a participation, of the glories of thy 
kingdom for his sake, who is my Lord and King, the holy 
and ever blessed Saviour of the world, our redeemer, Jesus. 
Amen. 

A Prayer to be said by Parents for their Children. 

O almighty and most merciful Father, who hast promised 
children as a reward to the righteous, and hast given them 
to me as a testimony of thy mercy, and an engagement of 
my duty ; be pleased to be a father unto them, and give 
them healthful bodies, understanding souls, and sanctified 
spirits, that they may be thy servants and children, all 
their days. Let a great mercy and providence lead them 
through the dangers and temptations and ignorances of 
their youth, that they may never run into folly, and the 
evils of an unbridled appetite. So order the accidents of 
their lives, that, by good education, careful tutors, holy 
example, innocent company, prudent counsel, and thy re¬ 
straining grace, their duty to thee may be secured in the 
midst of a crooked and untoward generation : and if it seem 
good in thy eyes, let me be enabled to provide conveniently 
for the support of their persons, that they may not be des¬ 
titute and miserable in my death; or if thou shalt call me 
off from this world by a more timely summons, let their 
portion be, thy care, mercy, providence, over their bodies 
and souls: and may they never live vicious lives, nor die 
violent or untimely deaths; but let them glorify thee here 
with a free obedience, and the duties of a whole life ; that 


THE DUTIES OF JUSTICE. 


157 

when they have served thee in their generations, and 
have profited the Christian commonwealth, they may be 
coheirs with Jesus, in the glories of thy eternal kingdom, 
through the same our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 

A Prayer to be said by Masters of Families, Curates , Tutors , 
or other obliged Persons, for their charges . 

O almighty God, merciful and gracious, have mercy 
upon my family, [or pupils, or jmrishioners, &c.] and all 
committed to my charge : sanctify them with thy grace, 
preserve them with thy providence, guard them from all 
evil by the custody of angels, direct them in the ways of 
peace and holy religion by my ministry and the conduct of 
thy most Holy Spirit, and consign them all, with the par 
ticipation of thy blessings and graces in this world, with 
healthful bodies, with good understandings, and sanctified 
spirits, to a full fruition of thy glories hereafter, through 
Jesus Christ, our Lord. 

A Prayer to be said by Merchants, Tradesmen, and 

Handicraftsmen. 

O eternal God, thou fountain of justice, mercy and 
benediction, who, by my education and other effects of 
thy providence hast called me to this profession, that, by 
my industry, I may, in my small proportion, work together 
for the good of myself and others ; I humbly beg thy grace 
to guide me in my intention, and in the transaction of my 
affairs, that I may be diligent, just, and faithful: and give 
me thy favour, that this my labour may be accepted by thee 
as a part of my necessary duty : and give me thy blessing to 
assist and prosper me in my calling, to such measures, as 
thou shalt, in mercy, choose for me : and be pleased to let 
thy Holy Spirit be for ever present with me, that I may 
never be given to covetousness and sordid appetites, to 
lying or falsehood, or any other base, indirect, and beggar¬ 
ly arts; but give me prudence, honesty, and Christian sin¬ 
cerity, that my trade may be sanctified by my religion; my 
labour, by my intention and thy blessing; that, when I have 
done my portion of work thou hast allotted me, and improv¬ 
ed the talent thou hast intrusted to me, and served the 
commonwealth in my capacity; I may receive the mighty 
price of my high calling, which I expect and beg, in the 
portion and inheritance of the ever blessed Saviour and 
Redeemer, Jesus. Amen. 

Q 


158 


PRAYERS, ETC. 


A Prayer to be said by Debtors , and all Persons obliged 
whether by crime or contract. 

O almighty God, who art rich unto all, the treasury and 
fountain of all good, of all justice, and all mercy, and all 
bounty, and to whom we owe all, that we are, and all 
that we have, being thy debtors by reason of our sins, and 
by thy own gracious contract, made with us in Jesus 
Christ; teach me, in the first place, to perform all my obli¬ 
gations to thee, both of duty and thankfulness; and next, 
enable me to pay my duty to all my friends, and my debts 
to all my creditors, that none be made miserable or les¬ 
sened in his estate by his kindness to me, or traffic with 
me. Forgive me all those sins and irregular actions, by 
which I entered into debt farther than my necessity re¬ 
quired, or by which such necessity was brought upon me ; 
but let not them suffer by occasion of my sin. Lord re¬ 
ward all their kindness into their bosoms, and make them 
recompense, where I cannot; and make me very willing 
in all that I can, and able for all, that I am obliged to : or, 
if it seem good in thine eyes to afflict me by the continu¬ 
ance of this condition, yet make it up by some means to 
them, that the prayer of thy servant may obtain of thee at 
least, to pay my debt in blessings. Amen. 

V. 

Lord, sanctify and forgive all that I have tempted to evil 
by my discourse or my example ; instruct them in the right 
way whom I have led to error, and let me never run . far¬ 
ther on the score of sin : but do thou blot out all the evils 
I have done, by the spunge of thy passion, and the blood 
of thy cross; and give me a deep and an excellent repent¬ 
ance, and a free and a gracious pardon, that thou mayest 
answer for me, O Lord, and enable me to stand upright in 
judgment; for in thee, O Lord, have I trusted; let me 
never be confounded. Pity me and instruct me, guide me 
and support me, pardon me and save me, for my sweet 
Saviour, Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. 

A Prayer for Patron and Benefactors. 

O almighty God, thou fountain of all good, of all excel¬ 
lency both of men and angels, extend thine abundant fa¬ 
vour and loving-kindness to my patron, to all my friends 


) 


OF RELIGION. 


159 

and benefactors; reward them and make them plentiful 
recompense for all the good, which, from thy merciful pro¬ 
vidence, they have conveyed unto me. Let the light of 
thy countenance shine upon them, and let them never 
come into any affliction or sadness, but such as may be an 
instrument of thy glory and their eternal comfort. For¬ 
give them all their sins; let thy divinest Spirit preserve 
them from all deeds of darkness. Let thy ministering 
angels guard their persons from the violence of the spirits 
of darkness. And thou, who knowest every degree of their 
necessity by thy infinite wisdom, give supply to all their 
needs by thy glorious mercy, preserving their persons, 
sanctifying their hearts, and leading them in the ways of 
righteousness, by the waters of comfort, to the land of 
eternal rest and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen. 


CHAPTER IV. 

OF CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 

Religion, in a large sense, doth signify the whole duty 
of man, comprehending in it justice, charity, and sobriety ; 
because all these being commanded by God, they become 
a part of that honour and worship, which we are bound to 
pay to him. And thus the word is used in St. James, 
“ Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father 
is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, 
and to keep himself unspotted from the world.But, in 
a more restrained sense, it is taken from that part of duty, 
which particularly relates to God in our worshippings and 
adoration of him, in confessing his excellencies, loving his 
person, admiring his goodness, believing his word, and doing 
all that, which may, in a proper and direct manner, do him 
honour. It contains the duties of the first table only; and 
so it is called godliness,f and is by St. Paul distinguished 
from justice and sobriety. In this sense I am now to ex¬ 
plicate the parts of it. 

Of the internal Actions of Religion . 

Those I call the internal actions of religion, in which the 
soul only is employed, and ministers to God in the specia. 

* James i. 27. t Tit. ii. 12. 


OF FAITH. 


160 

actions of faith, hope, and charity. Faith believes the re 
velations of God : hope expects his promises: and charity 
loves his excellencies and mercies. Faith gives us under¬ 
standing to God : hope gives up the passions and affections 
to heaven and heavenly things : and charity gives the will 
to the service of God. Faith is opposed to infidelity, hope 
to despair, charity to enmity and hostility : and these three 
sanctify the whole man, and make our duty to God and 
obedience to his commandments to be chosen, reasonable, 
and delightful, and therefore to be entire, persevering, and 
universal. 

- SECTION l 

OF FAITH. 

The Acts and Offices of Faith are 7 

1. To believe every thing which God hath revealed to 
us: and, when once we are convinced, that God hath 
spoken it, to make no farther inquiry, but humbly to sub¬ 
mit ; ever remembering, that there are some things, which 
our understanding cannot fathom, nor search out their 
depth. 

2. To believe nothing concerning God, but what is 
honourable and excellent, as knowing that belief to be no 
honouring of God, which entertains of him any dishonour¬ 
able thoughts. Faith is the parent of charity ; and what¬ 
soever faith entertains, must be apt to produce love to 
God : but he that believes God to be cruel or unmerciful, 
or a rejoicer in the unavoidable damnation of the greatest 
part of mankind, or that he speaks one thing and privately 
means another, thinks evil thoughts concerning God, and 
such, as for which we should hate a man, and therefore are 
great enemies of faith, being apt to destroy charity. Our 
faith concerning God must be, as himself hath revealed and 
described his own excellencies; and, in our discourses, we 
must remove from him all imperfection, and attribute to him 
all excellency. 

3. To give ourselves wholly up to Christ, in heart and 
desire, to become discipfes of his doctrine with choice 
(besides conviction,) being in the presence of God but as 
idiots, that is, without any principles of our own to hinder 
the truth of God; but sucking in greedily all that God 


OF FAITH. 


161 


hath taught us, believing it infinitely, and loving to believe 
it. For this is an act of love, reflected upon faith, or an 
act of faith leaning upon love. 

4. To believe all God’s promises, and that whatsoever 
is promised in Scripture, shall, on God’s part, be as surely 
performed, as if we had it in possession. This act makes 
us to rely upon God with the same confidence, as we did 
on our parents, when we were children, when we made no 
doubt, but whatsoever we needed, we should have it, if it 
were in their power. 

5. To believe also the conditions of the promise, or that 
part of the revelation, which concerns our duty. Many are 
apt to believe the article of remission of sins, but they be¬ 
lieve it, without the condition of repentance, or the fruits 
of holy life : and that is to believe the article otherwise than 
God intended it. For the covenant of the gospel is the great 
object of faith, and that supposes our duty to answer his grace 
that God will be our God, so long as we are his people. 
The other is not faith, but flattery. 

6. To profess publicly the doctrine of Jesus Christ, openly 
owning whatsoever he hath revealed and commanded, not 
being ashamed of the word of God, or of any practices en 
joined by it; and this, without complying with any man’s 
interest, not regarding favour, nor being moved with good 
words, not fearing disgrace, or loss, or inconvenience, or 
death itself. 

7. To pray without doubting, without weariness, with¬ 
out faintness, entertaining no jealousies, or suspicions of 
God, but being confident of God’s hearing us, and of his 
returns to us, whatsoever the manner or the instance be, 
that, if we do our duty, it will be gracious and merciful. 

These acts of faith are, in several degrees, in the ser¬ 
vants of Jesus; some have it but as a grain of mustard- 
seed ; some grow up to a plant: some have the fulness of 
faith: but the least faith is, must be a persuasion so strong 
as to make us undertake the doing of all that duty, which 
Christ built upon the foundation of believing. But we 
shall best discern the truth of our faith by these following 
signs. St. Jerome reckons three. 

Signs of true Faith. 

1. An earnest and vehement prayer; for it is impos¬ 
sible, we should heartily believe the things of God and the 
Q 2 


OF FAITH. 


162 

glories of the gospel, and not most importunately desire 
them. For every thing is desired according to our belief 
of its excellency and possibility. 

2. To do nothing for vain-glory, but wholly for the 
interests of religion, and these articles we believe; valuing 
not at all the rumours of .men, but the praise of God, to 
whom, by faith, we have given up all our intellectual fa¬ 
culties. 

3. To be content with God for our judge, for our pa¬ 
tron, for our Lord, for our friend ; desiring God to be all 
in all to us, as we are, in ouir understanding and affections, 
wholly his. 

Add to these , 

4. To be a stranger upon earth in our affections, and to 
have all our thoughts and principal desires fixed upon the 
matters of faith, the things of heaven. For, if a man were 
adopted heir to Caesar, he would (if he believed it real and 
effective) despise the present, and wholly be at court in 
his father’s eye; and his desires would outrun his swiftest 
speed, and all his thoughts would spend themselves in 
creating ideas and little fantastic images of his future 
condition. Now God hath made us heirs of his kingdom, 
and coheirs with Jesus: if we believed this, we would 
think, and affect, and study accordingly. But he, that 
rejoices in gain, and his heart dwells in the world, and is 
espoused to a fair estate, and transported with a light 
momentary joy, and is afflicted with losses, and amazed 
with temporal persecutions, and esteems disgrace or po¬ 
verty in a good cause to be intolerable; this man either 
hath no inheritance in heaven, or believes none ; and be¬ 
lieves not, that he is adopted to be the son of God, the 
heir of eternal glory. 

5. St. James’s sign is the best: “ Shew me thy faith by 
thy works.” Faith makes the merchant diligent and ven¬ 
turous, and that makes him rich. Ferdinando, of Arra- 
gon, believed the story told him by Columbus, and there¬ 
fore he furnished him with ships, and got the West Indies 
by his faith in the undertaker. But Henry the Seventh, 
of England, believed him not; and therefore trusted him 
not with shipping, and lost all the purchase of that faith. 
It is told us by Christ, “ He that forgives, shall be for¬ 
given if we believe this, it is certain we shall forgive our 
enemies ; for none of us all but need and desire to be for- 


OF FAITH. 


163 

given. No man can possibly despise, or refuse to desire, 
such excellent glories, as are revealed to them that are ser¬ 
vants of Christ, and yet we do nothing, that is commanded 
us as a condition to obtain them. No man could work a 
day’s labour without faith ; but because he believes, he shall 
have his wages at the day’s or week’s end, he does his duty. 
But he only believes, who does that thing, which other men, 
in the like cases, do, when they do believe. He, that be¬ 
lieves money gotten with danger is better than poverty with 
safety, will venture for it in unknown lands or seas: and so 
will he, that believes it better to get to heaven with labour, 
than to go to hell with pleasure. 

6. He that believes, does not make haste, but waits 
patiently till the times of refreshment come, and dares 
trust God for the morrow, and is no more solicitous for 
the next year, than he is for that which is past: and it is 
certain, that man wants faith, who dares be more confident 
of being supplied, when he hath money in his purse, than 
when he hath it only in bills of exchange from God ; or 
that relies more upon his own industry than upon God’s 
providence, when his own industry fails him. If you dare 
trust to God, when the case, to human reason, seems im¬ 
possible, and trust to God then also out of choice, not be¬ 
cause you have nothing else to trust to, but because he is 
the only support of a just confidence, then you give a good 
testimony of your faith. 

7. True faith is confident, and will venture all the world 
upon the strength of its persuasion. Will you lay your 
life on it, your estate, your reputation, that the doctrine of 
Jesus Christ is true in every article ? Then you have true 
faith. But he that fears men more than God, believes men 
more than he believes in God. 

8. Faith, if it be true, living, and justifying, cannot 
be separated from a good life: it works miracles, makes 
a drunkard become sober, a lascivious person become 
chaste, a covetous man become liberal, “ it overcomes the 
world—it works righteousness,”* and makes us diligently 
to do, and cheerfully to suffer, whatsoever God hath placed 
in our way to heaven. 

The means and instruments to obtain Faith are , 

1. A humble, willing, and docile mind, or desire to be 
* 2 Cor. xiii. 5. Rom. viii. 10. 


OF FAITH. 


164 

instructed in the way of God: for persuasion enters like a 
sun-beam, gently, and without violence: and open but 
the window', and draw the curtain, and the Sun of righteous¬ 
ness will enliven your darkness. 

2. Remove all prejudices and love to every thing, which 
may be contradicted by faith. “ How can ye believe 
(said Christ,) that receive praise one of another ?” An 
unchaste man cannot easily be brought to believe, that, 
without purity, he shall never see God. He that loves 
riches, can hardly believe the doctrine of poverty and re¬ 
nunciation of the world: and arms and martyrdom and , 
the doctrine of the cross is folly to him, that loves his 
ease and pleasures. He, that hath within him any prin¬ 
ciple contrary to the doctrines of faith, cannot easily become 

a disciple. 

3. Prayer, which is instrumental to every thing, hath 
a particular promise in this thing. “ He that lacks wis¬ 
dom let him ask it of God and, “ If you give good things 
to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Fa¬ 
ther give his spirit to them that ask him V’ 

4. The consideration of the Divine omnipotence and 
infinite wisdom, and our own ignorance, are great instru¬ 
ments of curing all doubting, and silencing the murmurs 
of infidelity. 

5. Avoid all curiosity of inquiry into particulars and 
circumstances and mysteries : for true faith is full of inge¬ 
nuity and hearty simplicity, free from suspicion, wise and 
confident, trusting upon generals, without watching and pry¬ 
ing into unnecessary or indiscernible particulars. No man 
carries his bed into his field, to watch how his corn grows, 
but believes upon the general order of Providence and na¬ 
ture; and, at harvest, finds himself not deceived. 

6. In time of temptation, be not busy to dispute, but 
rely upon the conclusion, and throw yourself upon God 
and contend not with him but in prayer, and in the pre 
sence, and with the help, of a prudent untempted guide 
and be sure to esteem all changes of belief, which oflei 
themselves in the time of your greatest weakness (contrary 
to the persuasions of your best understanding) to be tempt 
ations, and reject them accordingly. 

7. It is a prudent course, that, in our health and best 
advantages, we lay up particular arguments and instru¬ 
ments of persuasion and confidence, to be brought forth 


OF HOPE. 


165 

and used in the great day of expense ; and that especially, 
in such things, in which we used to be most tempted, and 
in which we are least confident, and which are most ne¬ 
cessary, and which commonly the devil uses to assault us 
withal in the days of our visitation. 

8. The wisdom of the church of God is very remarkable 
in appointing festivals or holy days, whose solemnity and 
offices have no other special business but to record the ar¬ 
ticle of the day ; such as Trinity Sunday, Ascension, Easter, 
Christmas day; and to those persons, who can only believe, 
not prove or dispute, there is no better instrument to 
cause the remembrance and plain notion, and to endear 
the affection and hearty assent to the article, than the pro¬ 
claiming and recommending it by the festivity and joy of a 
holy day. 

SECTION II. 

Of the Hope of a Christian. 

Faith differs from hope, in the extension of its object, 
and in the intension of degree. St. Austin thus accounts 
their difference. Faith is of all things revealed, good and 
bad, rewards and punishments, of things past, present, and 
to come, of things that concern us, and of things that con¬ 
cern us not; but hope hath for its object things only that 
are good? and fit to be hoped for, future, and concerning 
ourselves: and because these things are offered to us upon 
conditions of which we may so fail, as we may change our 
will, therefore our certainty is less than the adherences of 
faith; which (because faith relies only upon one proposition, 
that is, the truth of the word of God) cannot be made un¬ 
certain in themselves, though the object of our hope may 
become uncertain to us, and to our possession. For it is 
infallibly certain, that there is heaven for all the godly, and 
for me amongst them all, if I do my duty. But that I shall 
enter into heaven, is the object of my hope, not of my faith ; 
and is so sure, as it is certain I shall persevere in the ways 
of God. 

The Acts of Hope are , 

1. To rely upon God with a confident expectation of his 
promises ; ever esteeming, that every promise of God is a 
magazine of all that grace and relief, which we can need in 


166 


OF HOPE 


that instance for which the promise is made. Every degree 
of hope is a degree of confidence. 

2. To esteem all the danger of an action, and the possi¬ 
bilities of miscarriage, and every cross accident that can in¬ 
tervene, to be no defect on God’s part, but either a mercy 
on his part, or a fault on ours: for then we shall be sure to 
trust in God, when we see him to be our confidence, and 
ourselves the cause of all mischances. The hope of a 
Christain is prudent and religious. 

3. To rejoice in the midst of a misfortune or seeming 
sadness, knowing, that this may work for good, and will, 
if we be not wanting to our souls. This is a direct act of 
hope, to look through the cloud, and look for a beam of 
the light from God : and this is called in Scripture, “ re¬ 
joicing in tribulation,” when the God of hope fills us with 
all joy in believing. Every degree of hope brings a degree 

joy- 

4. To desire, to pray, and to long for the great object of 
our hope, the mighty price of our high calling; and to de¬ 
sire the other things of this life, as they are promised; 
that is, so far as they are made necessary and useful to us. 
in order to God’s glory and the great end of souls. Hope 
and fasting are said to be the two wings of prayer. Fast¬ 
ing is but as the wing of a bird ; but hope is like the wing 
of an angel, soaring up to heaven, and bears our prayers 
to the throne of grace. Without hope it is impossible to 
pray ; but hope makes our prayers reasonable, passionate, 
and religious ; for it relies upon God’s promise, or expe¬ 
rience, or providence, and story. Prayer is always in pro¬ 
portion to our hope, zealous and affectionate. 

5. Perseverance is the perfection of the duty of hope, 
and its last act: and so long as our hope continues, so long 
we go on in duty and diligence; but he, that is to raise a 
castle in an hour sits down and does nothing towards it; 
and Herod the sophister, left off to teach his son, when he 
saw that twenty-four pages appointed to wait on him, and 
called by the several letters of the alphabet, could never 
make him understand his letters perfectly. 

Rules to govern our Hope. 

1. Let your hope be moderate ; proportioned to your 
state, person, and condition, whether it be for gifts or 
graces, or temporal favours. It is an ambitious hope for 


OF HOPE. 


167 

persons, whose diligence is like them, that are least in the 
kingdom of heaven, to believe themselves endeared to God 
as the greatest saints : or that they shall have a throne 
equal to St. Paul, or the blessed Virgin Mary. A stam¬ 
merer cannot, with moderation, hope for the gift of tongues ; 
or a peasant to become learned as Origen ; or if a beggar 
desires, or hopes, to become a king, or asks for a thousand 
pounds a year, we call him impudent, not passionate, much 
less reasonable. Hope that God will crown your endea¬ 
vours with equal measures of that reward, which he indeed 
freely gives, but yet gives according to our proportions. 
Hope for good success according to, or not much beyond 
the efficacy of the causes and the instrument; and let the 
husbandman hope for a good harvest, not for a rich king¬ 
dom, or a victorious army. 

2. Let your hope be well founded, relying upon just con¬ 
fidences, that is, upon God according to his revelations and 
promises. For it is possible for a man, to have a vain hope 
upon God : and, in matters of religion, it is presumption 
to hope, that God’s mercies will be poured forth upon 
lazy persons, that do nothing towards holy and strict 
walking, nothing (I say) but trust, and long for an event 
besides, and against all disposition of the means. Every 
false principle in religion is a reed of Egypt, false and 
dangerous. Rely not in temporal things upon uncertain 
prophecies and astrology, not upon our own wit or industry, 
not upon gold or friends, not upon armies and princes ; ex¬ 
pect not health from physicians, that cannot cure their own 
breath, much less their mortality; use all lawful instru¬ 
ments, but expect nothing from them above their natural or 
ordinary efficacy, and, in the use of them, from God ex¬ 
pect a blessing. A hope, that is easy and credulous, is an 
arm of flesh, an ill supporter without a bone.* 

3. Let your hope be without vanity, or garishness of 
spirit; but sober, grave, and silent, fixed in the heart, not 
borne upon the lip, apt to support our spirits within, but 
not to provoke envy abroad. 

4. Let your hope be of things possible, safe, and useful. 
He that hopes for an opportunity of acting his revenge, or 
lust, or rapine, watches to do himself a mischief. All evils 
of ourselves, or brethren, are objects of our fear,not hope; 


* Jer. xvii. 5. 


168 


OF HOPE. 


and, when it is truly understood, things useless and unsafe 
can no more be wished for, than things impossible can be 
obtained. 

5. Let your hope be patient, without tediousness of spirit, 
or hastiness of prefixing time. Make no limits or prescrip- 
tions to God; but let your prayers and endeavours go on 
still with a constant attendance on the periods of God’s pro¬ 
vidence. The men of Bethulia resolved to wait upon God. 
but five days longer : but deliverance stayed seven days* 
and yet came at last. And take not every accident for an 
argument of despair : but go on still in hoping; and begin 
again to work, if any ill accident have interrupted you. 

Means of Hope , and Remedies against Despair. 

The means to cure despair, and to continue or increase 
hope, are, partly by consideration, partly by exercise. 

1. Apply your mind to the cure of all the proper causes 
of despair : and they are, weakness of spirit, or violence of 
passion. He, that greedily covets, is impatient of delay, 
and desperate in contrary accidents ; and he, that is little 
of heart, is also of little hope, and apt to sorrow and sus¬ 
picion. 

2. Despise the things of the world, and be indifferent to 
all changes and events of Providence : and, for the things 
of God, the promises are certain to be performed in kind; 
and, where there is less variety of chance, there is less pos¬ 
sibility of being mocked: but he that creates to himself 
thousands of little hopes, uncertain in the promise, fallible 
in the event, and depending upon ten thousand circum¬ 
stances (as are all the things of this world,) shall often fail 
in his expectations, and be used to arguments of distrust in 
such hopes. 

3. So long as your hopes are regular and reasonable, 
though in temporal affairs, such as are deliverance from 
enemies, escaping a storm or shipwreck, recovery from a 
sickness, ability to pay your debts. &c. remember, that there 
are some things ordinary and some things extraordinary, to 
prevent despair. In ordinary, remember, that the very 
hoping in God is an endearment of him, and a means to ob¬ 
tain the blessing: “I will deliver him, because he hath put 
his trust in me.” 2. There are in God all those glorious attri¬ 
butes and excellencies, which, in the nature of things, can 
possibly create or confirm hope. God is, 1, strong ; 2, wise ; 


OF HOPE. 


169 

5 , true ; 4, loving. There cannot be added another capacity 
to create a confidence ; for, upon these premises, we can¬ 
not fail of receiving what is fit for us. 3. God hath obliged 
himself, by promise, that we shall have the good of every 
thing we desire : for even losses and denial shall work for 
the good of them that fear God. And, if we will trust the 
* truth of God for performance of the general, we may well 
trust his wisdom to choose for us the particular. But the 
extraordinaries of God are apt to supply the defect of all 
natural and human possibilities. 1. God hath, in many 
instances, given extraordinary virtue to the active causes 
and instruments : to a jaw-bone, to kill a multitude ; to 
three hundred men, to destroy a great army; to Jonathan 
and his armour-bearer, to rout a whole garrison. 2. He 
hath given excellent sufferance and vigorousness to the 
sufferers, arming them with strange courage, heroical for¬ 
titude, invincible resolution, and glorious patience: and 
thus he lays no more upon us, than we are able to bear; 
for when he increases our sufferings, he lessens them, by 
increasing our patience. 3. His providence is extra-re¬ 
gular, and produces strange things beyond common rules : 
and he, that led Israel through a sea, and made a rock 
pour forth waters, and the heavens to give them bread and 
flesh, and whole armies to be destroyed with fantastic 
noises, and the fortune of all France to be recovered and 
entirely revolved, by the arms and conduct of a girl, 
against the torrent of the English fortune and chivalry, can 
do what he please ; and still retains the same affections to 
his people, and the same providence over mankind as ever. 
And it is impossible for that man to despair, who remem¬ 
bers that his helper is omnipotent, and can do what he 
please.* Let us rest there awhile ; he can, if he please : 
and he is infinitely loving, willing enough : and he is infi¬ 
nitely wise ; choosing better for us, than we can do for our¬ 
selves. This, in all ages and chances, hath supported the 
afflicted people of God, and carried them on dry ground 
through a Red-sea. God invites and cherishes the hopes 
of men, by all the variety of his providence. 

4. If your case be brought to the last extremity, and 
that you are at the pit’s brink, even the very margin of the 
grave, yet then despair not; at least put it off a little 
longer; and remember, that whatsoever final accident 

* Heb. ii. 18. 


R 


OF HOPE. 


170 

takes away all hope from you, if you stay a little longer 
and, in the mean while, bear it sweetly, it will also take away 
all despair too. For, when you enter into the regions of 
death, you rest from all your labours, and your fears. 

5. Let them, who are tempted to despair of their salva¬ 
tion, consider, how much Christ suffered to redeem us 
from sin and its eternal punishment: and he that consi¬ 
ders this, must needs believe, that the desires, which God 
had to save us, were not less than infinite ; and therefore 
not easily to be satisfied without it. 

6. Let no man despair of God’s mercies to forgive him 
unless he be sure that his sins be greater than God’s mer¬ 
cies. If they be not, we have much reason to hope, that 
the stronger ingredient will prevail, so long as we are in 
the time, and state of repentance, and within the possibili¬ 
ties and latitude of the covenant, and as long as any pro¬ 
mise can but reflect upon him with an oblique beam of 
comfort. Possibly the man may err in his judgment of 
circumstances; and therefore let him fear : but, because it 
is not certain he is mistaken, let him not despair. 

7. Consider that God, who knows all events of men, 
and what their final condition shall be, who shall be saved 
and w'ho will perish : yet he treateth them as his own, 
calls them to be his own, offers fair conditions as to his 
own, gives them blessings, arguments of mercy, and in¬ 
stances of fear, to call them off from death, and to call 
them home to life : and, in all this, shows no despair of 
happiness to them ; and therefore much iess should any 
man despair of himself, since he never was able to read the 
scrolls of the eternal predestination. 

8. Remember, that despair belongs only to passionate 
fools or villains (such as were Achitophel and Judas,) or 
else to devils and damned persons: and as the hope of 
salvation is a good disposition towards it; so is despair a 
certain consignation to eternal ruin. A man may be 
damned for despairing to be saved. Despair is the proper 
passion of damnation. “God hath placed truth and felicity 
in heaven; curiosity and repentance upon earth: but 
misery and despair are the portions of hell.” 

9. Gather together into your spirit and its treasure- 
house, the memory, not only all the promises of God, but 
also the remembrances of experience, and the former 
senses of the Divine favours that, from thence, you may 


OF HOPE 


171 

argue from times past to the present, and enlarge to the 
future, and to greater blessings. For although the con¬ 
jectures and expectations of hope are not like the conclu¬ 
sions of faith, yet they are a helmet against the scorchings 
of despair, in temporal things, and an anchor of the soul 
sure and steadfast against the fluctuations of the spirit, in 
matters of the soul. St. Bernard reckons divers princi¬ 
ples of hope, by enumerating the instances of the Divine 
mercy : and we may, by them, reduce this rule to practice 
in the following manner : 1. God hath preserved me from 
many sins: his mercies are infinite: I hope he will still 
preserve me from more, and for ever. 2. I have sinned, 
and God smote me not: his mercies are still over the peni¬ 
tent : I hope he will deliver me from all the evils I have 
deserved. He hath forgiven me many sins of malice ; and 
therefore surely he will pity my infirmities. 3. God visited 
my heart, and changed it: he loves the work of his own 
hands ; and so my heart is now become: I hope, he will 
love this too. 4. When I repented, he received me gra¬ 
ciously ; and therefore I hope, if I do my endeavour, he 
will totally forgive me. 5. He helped my slow and begin¬ 
ning endeavours ; and, therefore, I hope he will lead me to 
perfection. 6. When he had given me something first, then 
he gave me more : I hope, therefore, he will keep me from 
falling, and give me the grace of perseverance. 7. He hath 
chosen me to be a disciple of Christ’s institution : he hath 
elected me to his kingdom of grace; and therefore, I hope, 
also to the kingdom of his glory. 8. He died for me, 
when I was his enemy ; and therefore, I hope, he will save 
me, when he hath reconciled me to him, and is become my 
friend. 9. “ God hath given us his Son : how should not 
he, with him, give us all things else ?” All these St. Ber¬ 
nard reduces to these three heads, as the instruments of 
all our hopes: 1. The charity of God adopting us; 2. 
The truth of his promises; 3. The power of his perform¬ 
ance : which if any truly weighs, no infirmity or accident 
can break his hopes into indiscernible fragments, but some 
good planks will remain, after the greatest storm and ship¬ 
wreck. This was St. Paul’s instrument: “ Experience 
begets hope, and hope maketh not ashamed.” 

10. Do thou take care only of thy duty, of the means 
and proper instruments of thy purpose, and leave the end 
to God : lay that up with him, and he will take care of all 


172 


OF CHARITY, OR 


% 


that is intrusted to him : and this, being an act of confi¬ 
dence in God, is also a means of security to thee. 

11. By special arts of spiritual prudence and arguments^ 
secure the confident belief of the resurrection, and thou 
canst not but hope for every thing else, which you may 
reasonably expect, or lawfully desire, upon the stock of 
the Divine mercies and promises. 

12. If a despair seizes you in a particular temporal in¬ 
stance, let it not defile thy spirit with impure mixture, or 
mingle in spiritual considerations: but rather let it make 
thee fortify thy soul in matters of religion, that by being 
thrown out of your earthly dwelling and confidence, you 
may retire into the strengths of grace, and hope the more 
strongly in that, by how much you are the more defeated 
in this, that despair of a fortune or a success may become 
the necessity of all virtue. 

SECTION III. 

Of Charity , or the Love of God . 

Love is the greatest thing that God can give us : for him¬ 
self is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to 
God; for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all 
that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection ; 
it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great com¬ 
mandment, and it is all the commandments : for it is the 
fulfilling of the law. It does the work of all other graces, 
without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For 
as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own rea¬ 
son, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices 
of his friends, and without temptation, and without oppor¬ 
tunity : so does the love of God: it makes a man chaste 
without the laborious arts of fasting and exterior disci¬ 
plines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active 
enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and 
reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without 
any other arms but those of love. It is a grace, that loves 
God for himself; and our neighbours, for God. The con¬ 
sideration of God’s goodness and bounty, the experience 
of those profitable and excellent emanations from him, 
may be, and most commonly are, the first motive of our 
love: but, when we are once entered, and have tasted the 
goodness of God, we love the spring for its own excellency, 
passing from passion to reason, from thanking to adoring, 


THE LOVE OF GOD. 


173 

from sense to spirit, from considering- ourselves to an union 
with God : and this is the image and little representation 
of heaven ; it is beatitude in picture, or rather the infancy 
and beginnings of glory. 

We need no incentives by way of special enumeration to 
move us to the love of God; for we cannot love any thing 
for any reason real or imaginary, but that excellence is in¬ 
finitely more eminent in God. There can but two things 
create love, perfection and usefulness: to which answer on 
our part, 1, Admiration; and 2, Desire; and both these 
are centred in love. For the entertainment of the first, 
there is in God an infinite nature, immensity or vastness 
without extension or limit, immutability, eternity, omnipo¬ 
tence, omniscience, holiness, dominion, providence, boun¬ 
ty, mercy, justice, perfection in himself, and the end, to 
which all things and all actions must be directed, and will, 
at last, arrive. The consideration of which may be height¬ 
ened, if we consider our distance from all these glories ; 
our smallness and limited nature, our nothing, our incon¬ 
stancy, our age like a span, our weakness and ignorance, 
our poverty, our inadvertency and inconsideration, our dis¬ 
abilities and disaffections to do good, our harsh natures 
and unmerciful inclinations, our universal iniquity, and our 
necessities and dependencies, not only on God originally 
and essentially, but even our need of the meanest of God’s 
creatures, and our being obnoxious to the weakest and 
most contemptible. Hut, for the entertainment of the 
second, we may consider, that in him is a torrent of pleasure 
for the voluptuous ; he is the fountain of honour for the 
ambitious; an inexhaustible treasure for the covetous. 
Our vices are in love with fantastic pleasures and images 
of perfection, which are truly and really to be found no 
where but in God. And therefore our virtues have such 
proper objects, that it is but reasonable they should all 
turn into love : for certain it is, that this love will turn all 
into virtue. For in the scrutinies for righteousness and 
judgment, when it is inquired, whether such a person be a 
good man or no, the meaning is not, What does he be- 
ieve ? or what does he hope? but what he loves. 

The Acts of Love to God are , 

1. Love does all things which may please the beloved per¬ 
son ; it performs ail his commandments: and this is one 

R 2 


OF CHARITY, OR 


174 

of the greatest instances and arguments of our love, that 
God requires of us, this is love, “ That we keep his com¬ 
mandments.” Love is obedient. 

2. It does all the intimations and secret significations of 
his pleasure, whom we love ; and this is an argument of a 
great degree of it. The first instance is, it makes the love 
accepted: but this gives a greatness and singularity to it. 
The first is the least, and less than it cannot do our duty : 
but, without this second, we cannot come to perfection. 
Great love is also pliant and inquisitive in the instances of 
its expression. 

3. Love gives away all things, that so he may advance 
the interest of the beloved person : it relieves all that he 
would have relieved, and spends itself in such real signi¬ 
fications, as it is enabled withal. He never loved God, 
that will quit any thing of his religion, to save his money. 
Love is always liberal and communicative. 

4. It suffers all things that are imposed by its beloved, 
or that can happen for his sake, or that intervene in his 
service, cheerfully, sweetly, willingly ; expecting that God 
should turn them into good, and instruments of felicity. 
“ Charity hopeth all things, endureth all things.”* Love 
is patient and content with any thing, so it be together with 
its beloved. 

5. Love is also impatient of any thing, that may dis¬ 
please the beloved person; hating all sin as the enemy of 
its friend; for love contracts all *the same relations, and 
marries the same friendships and the same hatreds; and 
all affection to a sin is perfectly inconsistent with the love 
of God. Love is not divided between God and God’s 
enemy: we must love God with all our heart; that is, give 
him a whole and undivided affection, having love for no¬ 
thing else but such things which he allows, and which he 
commands, or loves himself. 

6. Love endeavours for ever to be present, to converse 
with, to enjoy, to be united with its object; loves to be 
talking of him, reciting his praises, telling his stories, re¬ 
peating his words, imitating his gestures, transcribing his 
copy in every thing; and every degree of union and every 
degree of likeness is a degree of love ; and it can endure 
any thing but the displeasure and the absence of its be¬ 
loved. For we are not to use God and religion, as men 

* 1 Cor. xiii. 


THE LOV r E OF GOD. 


175 

use perfumes, with which they are delighted, when they 
have them, but can very well be without them. True cha¬ 
rity is restless, till it enjoys God in such instances, in which 
it wants him: it is like hunger and thirst, it must be fed or 
it cannot be answered: and nothing can supply the pre¬ 
sence, or make recompense for the absence of God, or of 
the effects of his favour, and the light of his countenance 

7. True love in all accidents looks upon the beloved per 
son, and observes his countenance, and how he approves 
or disapproves, and accordingly, looks sad or cheerful. He, 
that loves God, is not displeased at those accidents which 
God chooses; nor murmurs at those changes, which he makes 
in his family; nor envies at those gifts he bestows: but 
chooses, as he likes, and is ruled by his judgment, and is 
perfectly of his persuasion: loving to learn, where God is 
the teacher, and being content to be ignorant or silent, 
where he is not pleased to open himself. 

8. Love is curious of little things, or circumstances and 
measures, and little accidents; not allowing to itself any 
infirmity, which it strives not to master, aiming at what it 
cannot yet reach, desiring to be of an angelical purity, and 
of a perfect innocence, and a seraphical fervour, and fears 
every image of offence; is as much afflicted at an idle word, 
as some at an act of adultery, and will not allow to itself so 
much anger as will disturb a child, nor endure the impurity 
of a dream. And this is the curiosity and niceness of 
Divine love: this is the fear of God, and is the daughter 
and production of love. 

The Measures and Rules of Divine Love . 

But because this passion is pure as the brightest and 
smoothest mirror, and 5 therefore, is apt to be sullied with 
every impurer breath, we must be careful, that our love to 
God be governed by these measures. 

1. That our love to God be sweet, even, and full of tran¬ 
quillity; having in it no violences, or transportations, but 
going on in a course of holy actions and duties, which are 
proportionable to our condition and present state; not to 
satisfy all the desire, but all the probabilities and measures 
of our strength. A new beginner in religion hath passionate 
and violent desires; but they must not be the measures of his 
actions: but he must consider his strength, his late sickness 
and state of death, the proper temptations of his condition, 


176 


OF CHARITY, OR 


and stand at first upon his defence: not go to storm a 
strong fort, or attack a potent enemy, or do heroical actions, 
and fitter for giants in religion. Indiscreet violences and 
untimely forwardness are the rocks of religion, against 
which tender spirits often suffer shipwreck. 

2. Let our love be prudent and without illusion: that is, 
that it express itself in such instances, which God hath 
chosen, or which we choose ourselves bv proportion to his 
rules and measures. Love turns into doating, when reli¬ 
gion turns into superstition. No degree of love can be im¬ 
prudent, but the expressions may: we cannot love God too 
much, but we may proclaim it in indecent manners. 

3. Let our love be firm, constant, and inseparable; not 
coming and returning like the tide, but descending like a 
never-failing river, ever running into the ocean of Divine 
excellency, passing on in the channels of duty and a con¬ 
stant obedience, and never ceasing to be what it is, till it 
comes to what it desires to be; still being a river, till it be 
turned into sea and vastness, even the immensity of a 
blessed eternity. 

Although the consideration of the Divine excellencies 
and mercies be infinitely sufficient to produce in us love to 
God (who is invisible, and yet not distant from us, but we 
feel him in his blessings, he dwells in our hearts by faith, 
we feed on him in the sacrament, and are made all one with 
him in the incarnation and glorification of Jesus;) yet, that 
we may the better enkindle and increase our love to God, 
the following advices are not useless. 

Helps to increase our Love to God by way of Exercise. 

1. Cut off all earthly and sensual loves; for they pollute 
and unhallow the pure and spiritual love. Every degree 
of inordinate affection to the things of this world, and every 
act of love to a sin, is a perfect enemy to the love of God; 
and it is a great shame to take any part of our affection 
from the eternal God, to bestow it upon his creature in 
defiance of the Creator; or to give it to the devil, our open 
enemy, in disparagement of him, who is the fountain of all 
excellencies and celestial amities. 

2. Lay fetters and restraints upon the imaginative and 
fantastic part; because our fancy, being an imperfect and 
higher faculty, is usually pleased with the entertainment of 
shadows and gauds; and because the things of the world 


THE LOVE OF GOD. 


177 

fill it with such beauties and fantastic imagery, the fancy 
presents such objects, as are amiable to the affections and 
elective powers. Persons of fancy, such as are women and 
children, have always the most violent loves: but, there¬ 
fore, if we be careful with what representments we fill our 
fancy, we may the sooner rectify our love. To this pur¬ 
pose it is good, that we transplant the instruments of fancy 
into religion: and for this reason music was brought into 
churches, and ornaments, and perfumes, and comely gar¬ 
ments, and solemnities, and decent ceremonies, that the 
busy and less discerning fancy, being bribed with its proper 
objects, may be instrumental to a more celestial and spiri¬ 
tual love. 

3. Remove solicitude or worldly cares and multitudes 
of secular businesses; for, if these take up the intention 
and actual application of our thoughts and our employments, 
they will also possess our passions; which, if they be filled 
with one object, though ignoble, cannot attend another, 
though more excellent. We always contract a friendship 
and relation with those with whom we converse; our very 
country is dear to us, for our being in it; and the neigh¬ 
bours of the same village, and those that buy and sell with 
us, have seized upon some portions of our love : and there¬ 
fore, if we dwell in the affairs of the world, we shall also 
grow in love with them; and all our love or all our hatred, 
all our hopes or all our fears, which the eternal God would 
willingly secure to himself, and esteem amongst his trea¬ 
sures and precious things, shall be spent upon trifles and 
vanities. 

4. Do not only choose the things of God, but secure 
your inclinations and aptnesses for God and for religion. 
For it will be a hard thing for a man to do such a personal 
violence to his first desires, as to choose whatsoever he 
hath no mind to. A man will many times satisfy the im¬ 
portunity and daily solicitations of his first longings; and, 
therefore, there is nothing can secure our loves to God, 
but stopping the natural fountains, and making religion to 
grow near the first desires of the soul. 

5. Converse with God, by frequent prayer. In particu¬ 
lar, desire that your desires may be right, and love to have 
your affections regular and holy. To which purpose make 
very frequent addresses to God by ejaculations and com¬ 
munions, and an assiduous daily devotion: discover to him 


178 


OF CHARITY, ETC. 


all your wants; complain to him of all your affronts; do as 
Hezekiah did, lay your misfortunes and your ill news be¬ 
fore him, spread them before the Lord; call to him for health, 
run to him for counsel, beg of him for pardon ; and it is as 
natural to love him, to whom we make such addresses, and 
of whom we have such dependences, as it is for children 
to love their parents. 

6. Consider the immensity and vastness of the Divine 
love to us, expressed in all the emanations of his provi¬ 
dence ; 1. In his creation ; 2. In his conservation of us. For 
it is not my prince, or my patron, or my friend, that sup¬ 
ports me, or relieves my needs; but God, who made the 
corn that my friend sends me; who created the grapes, and 
supported him who hath as many dependences, and as many 
natural necessities, and as perfect disabilities, as myself. 
God, indeed, made him the instrument of his providence to 
me, as he hath made his own land or his own cattle to him : 
with this only difference, that God, by his ministration to me, 
intends to do him a favour and a reward, which to natural 
instruments he doth not. 3. In givinghis Son; 4. In forgiv¬ 
ing our sins; 5. In adopting us to glory; and ten thousand 
times ten thousand little accidents and instances, happen¬ 
ing in the doing every of these : and it is not possible, but, 
for so great love we should give love again; for God, we 
should give man ; for felicity, we should part with our 
misery. Nay, so great is the love of the holy Jesus, God 
incarnate, that he would leave all his triumphant glories, 
and die once more for man, if it were necessary for procur¬ 
ing felicity to him. 

In the use of these instruments, love will grow in several 
knots and steps, like the sugar-canes of India, according to 
a thousand varieties in the persons loving; and it will be 
great or less, in several persons; and in the same, accord¬ 
ing to his growth in Christianity. But, in general discours¬ 
ing, there are but two states of love; and those are labour 
of love, and the zeal of love : the first is duty; the second is 
perfection. 

The two States of Love to God . 

The least love that is, must be obedient, pure, simple, 
and communicative: that is, it must exclude all affection 
to sin, and all inordinate affection to the world, and must 
be expressive, according to our power, in the instances of 


OF ZEAL. 


179 

duty, and must be love for love’s sake : and of this love, 
martyrdom is the highest instance; that is, a readiness of 
mind rather to suffer any evil, than to do any. Of this 
our blessed Saviour affirmed, that no man had greater love 
than this : that is, this is the highest point of duty, the great¬ 
est love, that God requires of man. And yet he, that is the 
most imperfect, must have this love also in preparation of 
mind, and must differ from another in nothing, except in 
the degrees of promptness and alacrity. And, in this 
sense, he that loves God truly, (though but with a begin¬ 
ning and tender love,) yet he loves God with all his heart, 
that is, with that degree of love, which is the highest 
point of duty, and of God’s charge upon us; and he that 
loves God with all his heart, may yet increase with the in¬ 
crease of God: just as there are degrees of love to God 
among the saints, and yet each of them love him with all 
their powers and capacities. 

2. But the greater state of love is the zeal of love, which 
runs out into excrescences and suckers, like a fruitful and 
pleasant tree, or bursting into gums, and producing fruits, not 
of a monstrous, but of an extraordinary and heroical great¬ 
ness. Concerning which, these cautions are to be observed. 

Cautions and Rules concerning Zeal. 

1. If zeal be in the beginnings of our spiritual birth, or 
be short, sudden, and transient; or be a consequent of a 
man’s natural temper; or come upon any cause but after 
a long growth of a temperate and well-regulated love; it 
is to be suspected for passion and frowardness, rather than 
the vertical point of love.* 

2. That zeal only is good, which, in a fervent love, hath 
temperate expressions. For let the affection boil as high 
as it can, yet if it boil over into irregular and strange ac¬ 
tions, it will have but few, but will need many, excuses. 
Elijah was zealous for the Lord of Hosts; and yet he was 
so transported with it, that he could not receive answer 
from God, till, by music, he was recomposed and tamed: 
and Moses broke both the tables of the law, by being pas¬ 
sionately zealous against them, that broke the first. 

3. Zeal must spend its greatest heat, principally, in those 
things that concern ourselves; but with great care and re¬ 
straint in those that concern others. 

* Gal. iv 18. 


OF ZEAL. 


*80 

4. Remember, that zeal, being an excrescence of Divine 
love, must, in no sense, contradict any action of love. 
Love to God includes love* to our neighbour; and there¬ 
fore, no pretence of zeal for God’s glory must make us un¬ 
charitable to our brother; for that is just so pleasing to 
God, as hatred is an act of love. 

5. That zeal, that concerns others, can spend itself in 
nothing but arts, and actions, and charitable instruments, 
for their good: and, when it concerns the good of many, 
that one should suffer, .it must be done by persons of a com¬ 
petent authority, and in great necessity, in seldom in¬ 
stances, according to the law of God or man; but never by 
private right, or for trifling accidents, or in mistaken pro¬ 
positions. The Zealots, in the old law, had authority to 
transfix and stab some certain persons: but God gave them 
warrant: it was in the case of idolatry, or such notorious 
huge crimes, the danger of which was insupportable, and 
the cognizance of which was infallible : and yet that war¬ 
rant expired with the synagogue. 

6. Zeal, in the instances of our own duty and personal 
deportment, is more safe than in matters of counsel, and 
actions besides our just duty, and tending towards perfec¬ 
tion. Though, in these instances, there is not a direct sin, 
even where the zeal is less wary, yet there is much trouble 
and some danger; as, if it be spent in the too-forward 
vows of chastity, and restraints of natural and innocent 
liberties. 

7. Zeal may be let loose in the instances of internal, 
personal, and spiritual actions, that are matters of direct 
duty : as in prayers, and acts of adoration, and thanksgiv¬ 
ing, and frequent addresses: provided that no indirect act 
pass upon them to defile them; such as complacency, and 
opinions of sanctity, censuring others, scruples and opinions 
of necessity, unnecessary fears, and superstitious number¬ 
ings of times and hours: but let the zeal be as forward as 
it will, as devout as it will, as seraphical as it will, in the 
direct address and intercourse with God, there is no danger 
no transgression. Do all the parts of your duty as earnest¬ 
ly, as if the salvation of all the world, and the whole glory 
of God, and the confusion of all devils and all that you hope 
or desire, did depend upon every one action. 

8. Let zeal be seated in the will and choice, and regu- 

* Phil. iii. 6 . 


OF ZEAL. 


181 


lated with prudence and a sober understanding, not in 
the fancies and affections for these will make it full of 
noise and empty of profit; but that will make it deep and 
smooth, material and devout. 

The sum is this : that zeal is not a direct duty, nowhere 
commanded for itself, and is nothing but a forwardness and 
circumstance of another duty, and therefore is then only 
acceptable, when it advances the love of God and our 
neighbours, whose circumstance it is.f That zeal is only 
safe, only acceptable, which increases charity directly ; 
and because love to our neighbour and obedience to God 
are the two great portions of charity, we must never ac¬ 
count our zeal to be good, but as it advances both these, 
if it be in a matter that relates to both ; or severally, if it re¬ 
lates severally. St. Paul’s zeal was expressed in preaching 
without any offerings or stipend, in travelling, in spending 
and being spent for his flock, in suffering, in being willing 
to be accursed, for love of the people of God and his 
countrymen. Let our zeal be as great as his was, so it 
be in affections to others, but not at all in angers against 
them : in the first, there is no danger; in the second, there 
is no safety. In brief, et your zeal (if it must be expressed 
in anger) be always more severe against thyself than 
against others4 

IT The other part of love to God is love to our neighbour, 
for which I have reserved the paragraph of alms. 

Of the External Actions of Religion. 

Religion teaches us to present to God our bodies as well 
as our souls; for God is the Lord of both ; and if the 
body serves the soul in actions, natural, and civil, and 
intellectual, it must not be eased in the only offices of reli¬ 
gion, unless the body shall expect no portion of the rewards 
of religion, such as are resurrection, reunion, and glorifi¬ 
cation. “ Our bodies are to God a living sacrifice ; and 
to present them to God, is holy and acceptable.”§ 

The actions of the body, as it serves to religion, and as 
it is distinguished from sobriety and justice, either relate 
to the word of God, or to prayer, or to repentance, and 
make these kinds of external actions of religion. 1. Read¬ 
ing and hearing the word of God : 2. Fasting and corpora] 

* Rom. x. 2. t Tit. ii. 14. Rev. iii. 16. 

$ 2 Cor. vii. 11. $ Rom. xii. 1. 


S 


182 


OF READING OR HEARING 


austerities, called by St. Paul, bodily exercise: 3. Feast¬ 
ing, or keeping days of public joy and thanksgiving. 

SECTION IV. 

Of Reading or Hearing the Word of God . 

Reading and hearing the. word of God are but the se¬ 
veral circumstances of the same duty; instrumental espe¬ 
cially to faith ; but, consequently, to all other graces of the 
Spirit. It is all one to us, whether by the eye, or by the 
ear, the Spirit conveys his precepts to us. If we hear St. 
Paul saying to us, that “ whoremongers and adulterers God 
will judge,” or read it in one of his epistles; in either of 
them, we are equally and sufficiently instructed. The Scrip¬ 
tures read are the same thing to us, which the same doc¬ 
trine was, when it was preached by the disciples of our 
blessed Lord; and we are to learn of either, with the same 
dispositions. There are many, that cannot read the word, 
and they must take it in by the ear; and they that can read, 
find the same word of God by the eye. It is necessary that 
all men learn it in some way or other, and it is sufficient, 
in order to their practice, that they learn it any way. The 
word of God is all those commandments and revelations, 
those promises and threatenings, the stories and sermons 
recorded in the Bible : nothing else is the word of God, 
that we know of by any certain instrument. The good 
books and spiritual discourses, the sermons or homilies 
written or spoken by men, are but the word of men or ra¬ 
ther explications of, and exhortations according to, the 
word of God: but, of themselves, they are not the word of 
God. In a sermon, the text only is in a proper sense to 
be called God’s word : and yet good sermons are of great 
use and convenience for the advantages of religion. He, 
that preaches an hour together against drunkenness with the 
tongue of men or angels, hath spoke no other word of God 
but this, “ Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess 
and he that writes that sermon in a book, and publishes 
that book, hath preached to all that read it, a louder ser¬ 
mon than could be spoken in a church. This I say to this 
purpose, that we may separate truth from error, popular 
opinions from substantial truths. For God preaches to 
us in the Scripture, and by his secret assistances and spi¬ 
ritual thoughts and holy motions : good men preach to us, 


THE WORD OF GOD. 


183 

when they, by popular arguments, and human arts and 
compliances, expound and press any of those doctrines, 
which God hath preached unto us in his holy word. But, 

1. The Holy Ghost is certainly the best preacher in the 
world, and the words of Scripture the best sermons. 

2. All the doctrine of salvation is so plainly set down there, 
that the most unlearned person, by hearing it read, may 
understand all his duty. What can be plainer spoken 
than this, “ Thou shalt not kill. Be not drunk with wine. 
Husbands, love your wives. Whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye so to them.” The wit of man 
cannot more plainly tell us our duty, or more fully, than 
the Holy Ghost hath done already. 

3. Good sermons and good books are of excellent use : 
but yet they can serve no other end, but that we practise 
the plain doctrines of Scripture. 

4. What Abraham, in the parable, said concerning the 
brethren of the rich man, is here very proper; “ They 
have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them : but if 
they refuse to hear these, neither will they believe, though 
one should arise from the dead to preach unto them.”* 

5. Reading the Holy Scriptures is a duty expressly com¬ 
manded us,f and is called in scripture “prea^ingall 
other preaching is the effect of human skill and industry, 
and although of great benefit, yet it is but an ecclesiastical 
ordinance ; the law of God concerning preaching being ex¬ 
pressed in the matter of reading the Scriptures, and bear¬ 
ing that word of God which is, and as it is, there described. 

But this duty is reduced to practice in the following rules. 

Rules for Hearing or Reading the Word of God . 

1. Set apart some portion of thy time, according to the 
opportunities of thy calling and necessary employment, 
for the reading of Holy Scripture ; and, if it be possible, 
every day, read or hear some of it read : you are sure that 
book teaches all truth, commands all holiness, and pro¬ 
mises all happiness. 

2. When it is in your power to choose, accustom your¬ 
self to such portions, which are most plain and certain 
duty, and which contain the story of the life and death of 

* Luke xvi. 29. 31. 

t Deut. xxxi. 13. Luke xxiv. 45. Matt. xxii. 29. Actsxv. 21. Rev.i. 3 
2 Tim. iii. 6. 


184 


OF READING OR HEARING 


our blessed Saviour. Read the gospels, the Psalms oi 
David; and especially those portions of Scripture which, 
by the wisdom of the church, are appointed to be publicly 
read upon Sundays and holydays, viz. the epistles and 
gospels. In the choice of any other portions, you may ad¬ 
vise with a spiritual guide, that you may spend your time 
with most profit. 

3. Fail not diligently to attend to the reading of Holy 
Scriptures, upon those days wherein it is most publicly 
and solemnly read in churches : for at such times, besides 
the learning our duty, we obtain a blessing along with it: 
it becoming to us, upon those days, a part of the solemn 
Divine worship. 

4. When the word of God is read or preached to you, be 
sure you be of a ready heart and mind, free from worldly 
cares and thoughts, diligent to hear, careful to mark, stu 
dious to remember, and desirous to practise all that is com¬ 
manded, and to live according to it. Do not hear for any 
other end, but to become better in your life, and to be in¬ 
structed in every good work, and to increase in the love and 
service of God. 

5. Beg of God, by prayer, that he would give you the 
spirit of -diedience and profit, and that he would, by his 
Spirit, write the word in your heart, and that you describe 
it in your life. To which purpose serve yourself of some 
affectionate ejaculations to that purpose, before and after 
this duty. 

Concerning Spiritual Books and Ordinary Sermons , take 

in these Advices also. 

6. Let not a prejudice to any man’s person hinder thee 
from receiving good by his doctrine, if it be according to 
godliness: but (if occasion offer it, or especially if duty 
present it to thee, that is, if it be preached in that assem¬ 
bly, where thou art bound to be present) accept the word 
preached, as a message from God, and the minister, as his 
angel in that ministration. 

7. Consider and remark the doctrine that is represented 
to thee in any discourse; and if the preacher adds ac¬ 
cidental advantages, any thing to comply with thy weak¬ 
ness, or to put thy spirit into action, or holy resolution, 
remember it, and make use of it. But if the preacher be 
a weak person, yet the text is the doctrine thou art to re- 


THE WORD OF GOD. 


185 

member; that contains all thy duty, it is worth thy attend¬ 
ance to hear that spoken often, and renewed upon thy 
thoughts: and though thou beest a learned man, yet the 
same thing, which thou knowest already, if spoken by an¬ 
other, may be made active by that application. I can bet¬ 
ter be comforted by my own consideration, if another hand 
applies them, than if 1 do it myself; because the word oi 
God does not work as a natural agent, but as a Divine in¬ 
strument : it does not prevail by the force of deduction and 
artificial discoursings only, but chiefly by way of blessing 
in the ordinance, and in the ministry of an appointed person. 
At least, obey the public order, and reverence the consti¬ 
tution, and give good example of humility, charity, and 
obedience. 

8. When Scriptures are read, you are only to inquire, 
with diligence and modesty, into the meaning of the Spirit: 
but if homilies or sermons be made upon the words of 
Scripture, you are to consider, whether all that be spoken, 
be conformable to the Scriptures. For, although you may 
practise for human reasons, and human arguments, minis¬ 
tered from the preacher’s art; yet you must practise nothing 
but the command of God, nothing but the doctrine of Scrip¬ 
ture, that is, the text. 

9. Use the advice of some spiritual or other prudent man, 
for the choice of such spiritual books, which may be of 
use and benefit for the edification of thy spirit in the ways 
of holy living; and esteem that time well accounted for, 
that is prudently and affectionately employed in hearing 
or reading good books and pious discourses; ever remem¬ 
bering, that God, by hearing us speak to him in prayer, 
obliges us to hear him speak to us in his word, by what 
instrument soever it be conveyed. 

SECTION V. 

Of Fasting• 

Fasting, if it be considered in itself without relation to 
spiritual ends, is a duty no where enjoined or counselled. 
But Christianity hath to do with it, as it may be made an 
instrument of the Spirit, by subduing the lusts of the flesh, . 
or removing any hindrances of religion. And it. hath been 
piactised by all ages of the church, and advised in order to 
three ministries; 1. To prayer; 2. To mortification ot 

s 2 


186 


OF FASTING. • 


bodily lusts; 3. To repentance: and it is to be practised, 
according to the following measures. 

Rules for Christian Fasting. 

1. Fasting, in order to prayer, is to be measured by the 
proportions of the times of prayer; that is, it ought to be 
a total fast from all things, during the solemnity, unless a 
probable necessity intervene. Thus the Jews ate nothing 
upon the sabbath days, till their great offices were per¬ 
formed ; that is, about the sixth hour: and St. Peter used 
it as an argument, that the apostles in Pentecost were not 
drunk, because it was but the third hour of the day ; of 
such a day, in which it was not lawful to eat or drink, till 
the sixth hour: and the Jews were offended at the disci¬ 
ples, for plucking the ears of corn, on the sabbath, early 
in the morning, because it was before the time, in which, 
by their customs, they esteemed it lawful to break their 
fast. In imitation of this custom, and in prosecution of 
the reason of it, the Christian church hath religiously ob¬ 
served fasting before the holy communion; and the more 
devout persons (though without any obligation at all,) re¬ 
fused to eat or drink, till they had finished their morning 
devotions: and further yet, upon days of humiliation, which 
are designed to be spent wholly in devotion, and for the 
averting God’s judgments, (if they were eminent,) fasting is 
commanded, together with prayer : commanded (I say) by 
the church to this end: that the spirit might be clearer and 
more angelical, when it is quitted in some proportions from 
the loads of flesh. 

2. Fasting, when it is in order to prayer, must be a 
total abstinence from all meat, or else an abatement of 
the quantity: for the help which fasting does to prayer, 
;annot be served by changing flesh into fish, or milk-meats 
into dry diet; but by turning much into little, or little into 
none at all, during the time of solemn and extraordinary 
grayer. 

3. Fasting, as it is instrumental to prayer, must be at¬ 
tended with other aids of the like virtue and efficacy; such 
as are removing for the time all worldly cares and secular 
businesses: and therefore our blessed Saviour enfolds 
these parts within the same caution; “ take heed, lest 
your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunken, 
ness, and the cares of this world, and that day overtake 


OF FASTING. 


187 


you unawares.” To which add alms ; for, upon the wings 
of fasting and alms, holy prayer infallibly mounts up to 
heaven. 

4. When fasting is intended to serve the duty of re¬ 
pentance, it is then best chosen, when it is short, sharp, 
and effective; that is, either a total abstinence from all 
nourishment (according as we shall appoint, or be ap¬ 
pointed,) during such a time, as is separate for the solemn¬ 
ity and attendance upon the employment: or, if we shall 
extend our severity beyond the solemn days, and keep 
our anger against our sin, as we are to keep our sorrow, 
that is, always in readiness, and often to be called upon ; 
then, to refuse a pleasant morsel, to abstain from the bread 
of our desires, and only to take wholesome and less pleas¬ 
ing nourishment, vexing our appetite by the refusing a 
lawful satisfaction, since, in its petulancy and luxury, it 
preyed upon an unlawful. 

5. Fasting, designed for repentance, must be ever joined 
with an extreme care, that we fast from sin : for there is 
no greater folly or indecency in the world, than to commit 
that for which I am now judging and condemning myself. 
This is the best fast, and the other may serve to promote 
the interest of this, by increasing the disaffection to it, 
and multiplying arguments against it. 

6. He that fasts for repentance, must, during that so¬ 
lemnity, abstain from all bodily delights, and the sensu¬ 
ality of all his senses and his appetites ; for a man must 
not, when he mourns in his fast, be merry in his sport: 
weep at dinner, and laugh all day after: have a silence 
in his kitchen, and music in his chamber: judge the sto¬ 
mach, and feast the other senses. I deny not, but a man 
may, in a single instance, punish a particular sin with a 
proper instrument. If a man have offended in his palate, 
he may choose to fast only; if he have sinned in softness 
and in his touch, he may choose to lie hard, or work hard, 
and use sharp inflictions : but although this discipline be 
proper and particular, yet because the sorrow is of the 
whole man, no sense must rejoice, or be with any study or 
purpose feasted and entertained softly. This rule is in¬ 
tended to relate to the solemn days appointed for repent¬ 
ance publicly or privately : besides which, in the whole 
course of our life, even in the midst of our most festival 
and freer jovs, we may sprinkle some single instances and 


188 


OF FASTING. 


acts of self-condemning, or punishing; as to refuse a 
pleasant morsel or a delicious draught with a tacit remem¬ 
brance of the sin, that now returns to displease my spirit. 
And, though these actions be single, there is no indecency 
in them ; because a man may abate of his ordinary liberty 
and bold freedom, with great prudence, so he does it 
without singularity in himself, or trouble to others ; but 
he may not abate of his solemn sorrow: that may be 
caution; but this would be softness, effeminacy, and 
indecency. 

7. When fasting is an act of mortification, that is, is in¬ 
tended to subdue a bodily lust, as the spirit of fornication, 
or the fondness of strong and impatient appetites, it must 
not be a sudden, sharp, and violent fast, but a state of 
fasting, a diet of fasting, a daily lessening our portion of 
meat and drink, and a choosing such a coarse diet, which 
may make the least preparation for the lusts of the body. 
He that fasts three days without food, will weaken other 
parts, more than the ministers of fornication ; and when 
the meals return as usually, they also will be served, as 
soon as any. In the mean time, they will be supplied and 
made active by the accidental heat that comes with such 
violent fastings : for this is a kind of aerial devil; the 
prince, that rules in the air, is the devil of fornication ; 
and he will be as tempting with the windiness of a violent 
fast, as with the flesh of an ordinary meal. But a daily 
subtraction of the nourishment will introduce a less busy 
habit of body: and that will prove the more effectual 
remedy. 

8. Fasting alone will not cure this devil, though it helps 
much towards it; but it must not, therefore, be neglected, 
but assisted by all the proper instruments of remedy 
against this unclean spirit: and what it is unable to do 
alone, in company with other instruments, and God’s bless¬ 
ing upon them, it may effect. 

9. All fasting, for whatsoever end it be undertaken, 
must be done without any opinion of the necessity of the 
thing itself, without censuring others, with all humility, in 
order to the proper end ; and just as a man takes physic ; 
of which no man hath reason to be proud, and no man thinks 
it necessary, but because he is in sickness, or in danger 
and disposition to it. 

10. All fasts, ordained by lawful authority, are to be 


OF FASTING. 


189 


observed in order to the same purposes, to which they are 
enjoined; and to be accompanied with actions of the same 
nature, just as it is in private fasts: for there is no other 
difference, but that, in public, our superiors choose for us, 
what, in private, we do for ourselves. 

11. Fasts, ordained by lawful authority, are not to be 
neglected ; because alone they cannot do the thing, in 
order to which they were enjoined. It may be, one day 
of humiliation will not obtain the blessing, or alone kill 
the lust: yet it must not be despised, if it can do any 
thing towards it. An act of fasting is an act of self- 
denial ; and, though it do not produce the habit, yet it is 
a good act. 

12. When the principal end, why a fast is publicly 
prescribed, is obtained by some other instrument, in a par¬ 
ticular person ; as if the spirit of fornication be cured by 
the rite of marriage, or by a gift of chastity ; yet that per¬ 
son, so eased, is not freed from the fasts of the church by 
that alone, if those fasts can prudently serve any other 
end of religion, as that of prayer, or repentance, or morti¬ 
fication of some other appetite ; for, when it is instrumental 
to any end of the Spirit, it is freed from superstition ; and 
then we must have some other reason to quit us from the 
obligation, or that alone will not do it. 

13. When the fast, publicly commanded by reason of 
some indisposition, in the particular person, cannot ope¬ 
rate to the end of the commandment; yet the avoiding 
offence, and the complying with public order, is reason 
enough to make the obedience to be necessary. For he, 
that is otherwise disobliged, as when the reason of the law 
ceases as to his particular, yet remains still obliged, if he 
cannot do otherwise, without scandal; but this is an obli¬ 
gation of charity, not of justice. 

14. All fasting is to be used with prudence and charity ; 
for there is no end, to which fasting serves, but may be 
obtained by other instruments : and, therefore, it must, at 
no hand, be made an instrument of scruple; or become an 
enemy to our health ; or be imposed upon persons, that 
are sick or aged, or to whom it is, in any sense, uncharit¬ 
able, such as are wearied travellers; or to whom, in the 
whole kind of it, it is useless, such as are women with 
child, poor people, and little children. But, in these cases, 
the church hath made provision, and inserted caution into 


190 


OF KEEPING FESTIVAL 


her laws ; and they are to be reduced to practice, according 
to custom, and the sentence of prudent persons, with great 
latitude, and without niceness and curiosity : having this in 
our first care, that we secure our virtue; and, next, that we 
secure our health, that v/e may the better exercise the la¬ 
bours of virtue; lest, out of too much austerity, w r e bring 
ourselves to that condition, that it be necessary to be indul¬ 
gent to softness, ease, and extreme tenderness. 

15. Let not intemperance be the prologue or the epilogue 
to your fast; lest the fast be so far from taking off any 
thing of the sin, that it be an occasion to increase it; and, 
therefore, when the fast is done, be careful, that no super¬ 
vening act of gluttony or excessive drinking unhallow the 
religion of the past day ; but eat temperately, according to 
the proportion of other meals, lest gluttony keep either of 
the gates to abstinence. 

The Benefits of Fasting. 

He that undertakes to enumerate the benefits of fasting, 
may, in the next page, also reckon all the benefits of physic; 
for fasting is not to be commended as a duty, but as an in¬ 
strument ; and, in that sense, no man can reprove it, or 
undervalue it, but he that knows neither spiritual arts, nor 
spiritual necessities. But, by the doctors of the church, it 
is called the nourishment of prayer, the restraint of lust, the 
wings of the soul, the diet of angels, the instrument of hu¬ 
mility and self-denial, the purification of the spirit: and 
the paleness and meagreness of visage, which is consequent 
to the daily fast of great mortifiers, is, by St. Basil, said to 
be the mark in the forehead, which the angel observed, 
when he signed the saints in the forehead to escape the 
wrath of God. “ The soul that is greatly vexed, which goeth 
stooping and feeble, and the eyes that fail, and the hungry 
soul, shall give thee praise and righteousness, O Lord.” 

SECTION VI. 

Of keeping Festivals , and Days holy to the Lord: 
particularly the Lord’s Day . 

True natural religion, that, which was common to all 
nations and ages, did principally rely upon four great pro¬ 
positions : 1. That there is one God ; 2. That God is no¬ 
thing of those things, which we see ; 3. That God takes 
care of all things below, and governs all the world ; 


DAYS TO GOD. 


191 


4.’That he is the great Creator of all things, without him¬ 
self: and, according to these, were framed the four first 
precepts of the decalogue. In the first, the unity of the 
Godhead is expressly affirmed: in the second, his invi¬ 
sibility and immateriality : in the third, is affirmed God’s 
government and providence, by avenging them, tnat swear 
falsely by his name; by which also his omniscience is 
declared. In the fourth commandment, he proclaims 
himself the Maker of heaven and earth : for, in memory 
of God’s rest from the work of six days, the seventh was 
hallowed into a sabbath; and the keeping it was a con¬ 
fessing God to be the great maker of heaven and earth; 
and consequently to this, it also was a confession of his 
goodness, his omnipotence, and his wisdom; all which 
were written with a sun-beam in the great book of the 
creature. 

So long as the law of the sabbath was bound upon 
God’s people, so long God would have that to be the 
solemn manner of confessing these attributes; but when, 
the priesthood being changed, there was a change also of 
the law, the great duty remained unalterable in changed 
circumstances. We are eternally bound to confess God 
Almighty to be the Maker of heaven and earth; but the 
manner of confessing it is changed from a rest, or a doing 
nothing, to a speaking something; from a day to a sym¬ 
bol ; from a ceremony to a substance; from a Jewish rite 
to a Christian duty ; we profess it in our creed, we confess 
it in our lives; we describe it by every line of our life, by 
every action of duty, by faith, and trust, and obedience : 
and we do also, upon great reason, comply with the Jew¬ 
ish manner of confessing the creation, so far as it is instru¬ 
mental to a real duty. We keep one day in seven, and so 
confess the manner and circumstances of the creation; and 
we rest also, that we may tend holy duties: so imitating 
God’s rest better than the Jew in Synesius, who lay upon 
his face from evening to evening, and could not, by stripes 
or wounds, be raised up to steer the ship in a great storm. 
God’s rest was not a natural cessation ; he, who could not 
labour, could not be said to rest: but God’s rest is to be 
understood to be a beholding and a rejoicing in his work 
finished: and therefore we truly represent God’s rest, 
when we confess and rejoice in God’s works and God’s 
glory. 


192 


OF KEEPING THE 


This the Christian church does upon every da) bift es¬ 
pecially upon the Lord’s day, which she hadi se; apart for 
this and all other offices of religion, being determined to 
this day by the resurrection of her dearest Lord, it being 
the first day of joy the church ever had. And now, upon 
the Lord’s day, we are not tied to the rest of the sabbath, 
but to all the work of the sabbath; and we are to abstain 
from bodily labour, not because it is a direct duty to us, 
as it was to the Jews ; but because it is necessary in order 
to our duty, that we attend to the offices of religion. 

The observation of the Lord’s day differs nothing from 
the observation of the sabbath, in the matter of religion, 
but in the manner. They differ in the ceremony and ex¬ 
ternal rite : rest, with them, was the principal; with us, it 
is the accessory. They differ in the office or forms of wor¬ 
ship : for they were then to worship God as a creator and 
a gentle father; we are to add to that, our Redeemer, and 
all his other excellencies and mercies. And, though we 
have more natural and proper reason to keep the Lord’s 
day than the sabbath, yet the Jews had a Divine command¬ 
ment for their day, which we have not for ours: but we 
have many commandments to do all that honour to God, 
which was intended in the fourth commandment; and the 
apostles appointed the first day of the week for doing it in 
solemn assemblies. And the manner of worshipping God, 
and doing him solemn honour and service upon this day, 
we may best observe in the following measures. 

Rules for keeping the Lord’s Day and other Christian 

Festivals. 

1. When you go about to distinguish festival days from 
eommon, do it not, by lessening the devotions of ordinary 
days, that the common devotion may seem bigger upon fes¬ 
tivals ; but, on every day, keep your ordinary devotions 
entire, and enlarge upon the holy day. 

2. Upon the Lord’s day, we must abstain from all ser¬ 
vile and laborious works, except such, which are matters 
of necessity, of common life, or of great charity ; for these 
are permitted by that authority, which hath separated the 
day for holy uses. The sabbath of the Jews, though con¬ 
sisting principally in rest, and established by God, did 
yield to these. The labour of love and the labours of re¬ 
ligion, were not against the reason and the spirit of the 


LORD’S DAY, ETC. 


193 


commandment, for which the letter was decreed and to 
which it ought to minister. And, therefore, much more is 
it so on the Lord’s day, where the letter is wholly turned 
into spirit, and there is no commandment of God, but of 
spiritual and holy actions. The priests might kill their 
beasts, and dress them for sacrifice ; and Christ, though 
born under the law, might heal a sick man; and the sick 
man might carry his bed to witness his recovery, and con¬ 
fess the mercy, and leap and dance to God for joy : and 
an ox might be led to water, and an ass be haled out of a 
ditch ; and a man may take physic, and he may eat meat, 
and therefore there were of necessity some to prepare and 
minister it; and the performing these labours did not con¬ 
sist in minutes and just determining stages; but they had, 
even then, a reasonable latitude; so only as to exclude 
unnecessary labour, or such, as did not minister to charity 
or religion. And, therefore, this is to be enlarged in the 
gospel, whose sabbath or rest is but a circumstance, and 
accessory to the principal and spiritual duties. Upon the 
Christian sabbath necessity is to be served first; then, cha¬ 
rity ; and then religion; for this is to give place to cha¬ 
rity, in great instances, and the second to the first, in all; 
and, in all cases, God is to be worshipped in spirit and in 
truth. 

3. The Lord’s day, being the remembrance of a great 
blessing, must be a day of joy, festivity, spiritual rejoicing, 
and thanksgiving : and therefore it is a proper work of the 
day, to let your devotions spend themselves in singing or 
reading psalms; in recounting the great works of God; 
in remembering his mercies; in worshipping his excellen¬ 
cies ; in celebrating his attributes ; in admiring his per¬ 
son ; in sending portions of pleasant meat to them, for 
whom nothing is provided; and in all the arts and instru¬ 
ments of advancing God’s glory, and the reputation of re¬ 
ligion : in which it were a great decency that a memorial 
of the resurrection should be inserted, that the particular 
religion of the day be not swallowed up in the general. 
And of this we may the more easily serve ourselves, by ri¬ 
sing seasonably in the morning to private devotion, and by 
retiring at the leisures and spaces of the day, not employed 
in public offices. 

4. Fail not to be present at the public hours and places 
of prayer, entering early and cheerfully, attending reve 

T 


194 


OF KEEPING THE 


rently and devoutly, abiding patiently during the whole 
office, piously assisting at the prayers, and gladly also 
hearing the sermon ; and, at no hand, omitting to receive 
the holy communion, when it is offered, (unless some great 
reason excuse it,) this being the great solemnity of thanks¬ 
giving, and a proper work of the day. 

5. After the solemnities are past, and in the intervals 
between the morning and evening devotion, (as you shall 
find opportunity,) visit sick persons, reconcile differences, 
do offices of neighbourhood, inquire into the needs of the 
poor, especially housekeepers, relieve them, as they shall 
need, and as you are able ; for then we truly rejoice in 
God, when we make our neighbours, the poor members of 
Christ, rejoice together with us. 

6. Whatsoever you are to do yourself, as necessary, you 
are to take care, that others also, who are under your 
charge, do in their station and manner. Let your servants 
be called to church, and all your family, that can be spared 
from necessary and great household ministries : those that 
cannot let them go by turns, and be supplied otherwise, 
as well as they may: and provide, on these days especially, 
that they be instructed in the articles of faith and necessary 
parts of their duty. 

7. Those, who labour hard in the week, must be eased 
upon the Lord’s day; such ease being a great charity and 
alms: but, at no hand, must they be permitted to use any 
unlawful games, any thing forbidden by the laws, any 
thing that is scandalous, or any thing that is dangerous and 
apt to mingle sin with it: no games prompting to wanton¬ 
ness, to drunkenness, to quarrelling, to ridiculous and su¬ 
perstitious customs; but let their refreshments be innocent, 
and charitable, and of good report, and not exclusive of the 
duties of religion. 

8. Beyond these bounds, because neither God nor man 
hath passed any obligation upon us, we must preserve our 
Christian liberty, and not suffer ourselves to be entangled 
with a yoke of bondage : for even a good action may be¬ 
come a snare to us, if we make it an occasion of scruple 
by a pretence of necessity, binding loads upon the con¬ 
science not with the bands of God, but of men, and of fan¬ 
cy, or of opinion, or of tyranny. Whatsoever is laid upon 
us by the hands of man, must be acted and accounted of 
by the measures of a man : but our best measure is this 


LORD’S DAY, ETC. 


195 

he keeps the Lord’s day best, that keeps it with most reli- 
gion and with most charity. 

9. What the church hath done in the article of the re- 
surrection, she hath in some measure done, in the other 
articles of the nativity, of the ascension, and of the descent 
of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost: and so great blessings 
deserve an universal solemnity ; since he is a very unthank¬ 
ful person, that does not often record them in the whole 
year, and esteem them the ground of his hopes, the object 
of his faith, the comfort of his troubles, and the great efflux¬ 
es of the Divine mercy, greater than all the victories over 
our temporal enemies, for which all glad persons usually 
give thanks. And if, with great reason, the memory of the 
resurrection does return solemnly every week, it is but rea¬ 
son, the other should return once a year. To which I add, 
that the commemoration of the articles of our Creed in so¬ 
lemn days and offices is a very excellent instrument to 
convey and imprint the sense and memory of it upon the 
spirits of the most ignorant persons. For, as a picture 
may, with more fancy, convey a story to a man, than a plain 
narrative either in word or writing: so a real representment, 
and an office of remembrance, and a day to declare it, is far 
more impressive than a picture, or any other art of making 
and fixing imagery. 

10. The memories of the saints are precious to God, and 
therefore they ought also to be so to us : and such persons, 
who served God by holy living, industrious preaching, and 
religious dying, ought to have their names preserved in 
honour, and God be glorified in them, and their holy doc¬ 
trines and lives published and imitated: and we, by so doing, 
give testimony to the article of the communion of saints. 
But, in these cases, as every church is to be sparing in the 
number of days, so also should she be temperate in her in¬ 
junctions, not imposing them but upon voluntary and unbu¬ 
sied persons, without snare or burden. But the holy day is 
best kept, by giving God thanks for the excellent persons, 
apostles, or martyrs, we then remember, and by imitating 
their lives; this all may do: and they, that can also keep 
the solemnnity, must do that too, when it is publicly en- 
joined. 

The mixed actions of Religion are , 1. Prayer , 2. Alms, 
3. Repentance , 4. Receiving the blessed Sacrament. 


196 


OF PRAYER. 


SECTION VII. 

Of Prayer . 

There is no greater argument in the world, of our spi 
ritual danger and unwillingness to religion, than the back* 
wardness which most men have always, and all men have 
sometimes, to say their prayers: so weary of their length, 
so glad when they are done, so witty to excuse and frus¬ 
trate an opportunity: and yet all is nothing but a desiring 
of God to give us the greatest and the best things we can 
need, and which can make us happy : it is a work so easy, 
so honourable, and to so great purpose, that in all the in¬ 
stances of religion and providence, (except only the incar¬ 
nation of his Son,) God hath not given us a greater argu¬ 
ment of his willingness to have us saved, and of our un¬ 
willingness to accept it, his goodness and our gracelessness, 
his infinite condescension and our carelessness and folly, 
than by rewarding so easy a duty with so great blessings. 

Motives to Prayer . 

I cannot say any thing beyond this very consideration 
and its appendages to invite Christian people to pray often. 
But we may consider that, 1. It is a duty commanded by 
God and his holy Son. 2. It is an act of grace and high¬ 
est honour, that we, dust and ashes, are admitted to speak 
to the eternal God, to run to him as to a father, to lay open 
our wants, to complain of our burdens, to explicate our 
scruples, to beg remedy and ease, support and counsel, 
health and safety, deliverance and salvation. And, 3. God 
hath invited us to it by many gracious promises of hearing 
us. 4. He hath appointed his most glorious Son to be the 
precedent of prayer, and to make continual intercession 
for us to the throne of grace. 5. He hath appointed an 
angel to present the prayers of his servants. And, 6. 
Christ unites them to his own, and sanctifies them, and 
makes them effective and prevalent: and, 7. hath put it 
into the hands of men to rescind, or alter all the decrees 
of God, which are of one kind, (that is, conditional, and 
concerning ourselves and our final estate, and many in¬ 
stances of our intermedia] or temporal,) by the power of 
prayers. 8. And the prayers of men have saved cities and 
kingdoms from ruin : prayer hath raised dead men to life, 
hath stopped the violence of fire, shut the mouths of wild 


OF PRAYER. 


197 

beasts, hath altered the course of nature, caused rain in 
Egypt, and drought in the sea; it made the sun to go from 
west to east, and the moon to stand still, and rocks and 
mountains to walk; and it cures diseases without physic, 
and makes physic to do the work of nature, and nature to 
do the work of grace, and grace to do the work of God; 
and it does miracles of accident and event: and yet prayer, 
that does all this, is, of itself, nothing but an ascent of the 
mind to God, a desiring things fit to be desired, and an 
expression of this desire to God, as we can, and as becomes 
us. And our unwillingness to pray, is nothing else but a 
not desiring, what we ought passionately to long for; cr, 
if we do desire it, it is a choosing rather to miss our satis¬ 
faction and felicity, than to ask for it. 

There is no more to be said in this affair, but that we 
reduce it to practice, according to the following rules. 

Rules for the Practice of Prayer . 

1. We must be careful, that we never ask any thing 
of God that is sinful, or that directly ministers to sin: for 
that is to ask of God to dishonour himself, and to undo 
us. We had need consider what we pray; for before it 
returns in blessing, it must be joined with Christ’s in¬ 
tercession, and presented to God. Let us principally ask 
of God power and assistances to do our duty, to glorify 
God, to do good works, to live a good life, to die in the 
fear and favour of God, and eternal life: these things God 
delights to give, and commands that we shall ask, and we 
may, with confidence, expect to be answered graciously ; for 
these things are promised without any reservation of a se¬ 
cret condition: if we ask them, and do our duty towards 
the obtaining them, we are sure never to miss them. 

2. We may lawfully pray to God for the gifts of the 
Spirit, that minister to holy ends; such as are the gift of 
preaching, the spirit of prayer, good expression, a ready 
and unloosed tongue, good understanding, learning, oppor¬ 
tunities to publish them, &c. with these only restraints : 
1 . That we cannot be so confident of the event of those 
prayers as of the former. 2. That we must be curious to 
secure our intention in these desires, that we may not ask 
them to serve our own ends, but only for God’s glory ; and 
then we shall have them, or a blessing for desiring them. 
In order to sue 1 .irposes, our intentions in the first de- 

t 2 


198 


OF PRAYER. 


sires cannot be amiss; because they are able to sanctify 
other things, and therefore cannot be unhallowed them¬ 
selves. 3. We must submit to God’s will, desiring him tc 
choose our employment, and to furnish our persons as he 
shall see expedient. 

3. Whatsoever we may lawfully desire of temporal things, 
we may lawfully ask of God in prayer, and we may ex¬ 
pect them, as they are promised. • 1. Whatsoever is neces¬ 
sary to our life and being, is promised to us : and therefore 
we may, with certainty, expect food and raiment; food to 
keep us alive, clothing to keep us from nakedness and 
shame : so long as our life is permitted to us, so long all 
things necessary to our life shall be ministered. We may 
be secure of maintenance, but not secure of our life ; for 
that is promised, not this : only concerning food and raiment 
we are not to make accounts by the measure of our desires, 
but by the measure of our needs. 2. Whatsoever is con¬ 
venient for us, pleasant, and modestly delectable, we may 
pray for: so we do it, 1. With submission to God’s will. 
2. Without impatient desires. 3. That it be not a trifle 
and inconsiderable, but a matter so grave and concerning, 
as to be a fit matter to be treated on, between God and our 
souls. 4. That we ask it not to spend upon our lusts, but 
for ends of justice, or charity, or religion, and that they be 
employed with sobriety. 

4. He that would pray with effect, must live with care and 
piety.* For although God gives to sinners and evil per¬ 
sons the common blessings of life and chance; yet either 
they want the comfort and blessing of those blessings, or 
they become occasions of sadder accidents to them, or 
serve to upbraid them in their ingratitude or irreligion : 
and, in all cases, they are not the effects of prayer, or the 
fruits of promise, or instances of a father’s love ; for they 
cannot be expected with confidence, or received without 
danger, or used without a curse and mischief in their com¬ 
pany. But as all sin is an impediment to prayer, so some 
have a special indisposition towards acceptation: such are 
uncharitableness and wrath, hypocrisy in the present ac¬ 
tion, pride, and lust: because these, by defiling the body 
or the spirit, or by contradicting some necessary ingredient 
in prayer, (such as are mercy, humility, purity, and sin? 

* John iii. 22. John ix. 31. Isa. i. 15. lviii. 9. Mai. iii. 10. 2 Tim. ii. 8 
Psal. iv. 6. Ixvi. 8. 


OF PRAYER, 


199 

cerity,) do defile the prayer, and make it a direct sin, in 
the circumstances or formality of the action. 

5. All prayer must be made with faith and hope; that 
is, we must certainly believe* we shall receive the grace, 
which God hath commanded us to ask ; and we must hope 
for such things, which he hath permitted us to ask; and 
our hope shall not be vain, though we miss what is not 
absolutely promised ; because we shall at least have an 
equal blessing in the denial, as in the grant. And, there¬ 
fore, the former conditions must first be secured ; that is, 
that we ask things necessary, or at least good and inno¬ 
cent and profitable, and that our persons be gracious in the 
eyes of God : or else, what God hath promised to our na¬ 
tural needs, he may, in many degrees, deny to our personal 
incapacity : but the thing being secured, and the person 
disposed, there can be no fault at all; for whatsoever else 
remains, is on God’s part, and that cannot possibly fail. 
But, because the things which are not commanded, cannot 
possibly be secured, (for we are not sure, they are good in 
all circumstances,) we can but hope for such things, even 
after we have secured our good intentions. We are sure 
of a blessing, but, in what instance, we are not yet assured. 

6. Our prayers must be fervent, intense, earnest, and 
importunate, when we pray for things of high concern¬ 
ment and necessity. “ Continuing instant in prayer; striv¬ 
ing in prayer; labouring fervently in prayer; night and day, 
praying exceedingly ; praying always with all prayerso 
St. Paul calls it.f “Watching unto prayer ;” so St. Peter 4 
“ Praying earnestlyso St. James.§ And this is not at 
all to be abated in matters spiritual and of duty: for, ac¬ 
cording as our desires are, so are our prayers ; and as our 
prayers are, so shall be the grace ; and, as that is, so shall 
be the measure of glory. But this admits of degrees 
according to the perfection or imperfection of our state of 
life : but it hath no other measures, but ought to be as 
great as it can ; the bigger, the better: we must make no 
positive restraints upon ourselves. In other things, we 
are to use a bridle: and, as we must limit our desires 
with*submission to God’s will; so also we must limit the 
importunity of our prayers, by the moderation and term 

* Mark xi. 24. Jam. i. 6, 7. 

t Rom. xii. 12; xv. 30. Col. iv. 12. 1 These, iii. 10. Ephes. vi. 18. 

t 1 Pet. iv. 7. § Jam. v 16. 


200 


OF PRAYER. 


of our desires. Pray for it as earnestly as you may de 
sire it. 

7. Our desires must be lasting, and our prayers frequent, 
assiduous, and continual; not asking for a blessing once, 
and then leaving it; but daily renewing our suits, and ex¬ 
ercising our hope, and faith, and patience, and long-suffer¬ 
ing, and religion, and resignation, and self-denial, in all 
the degrees we shall be put to. This circumstance of duty 
our blessed Saviour taught, saying, that “ men ought al¬ 
ways to pray and not to faint.”* Always to pray signifies 
the frequent doing of the duty in general: but, because we 
cannot always ask several things, and we also have frequent 
need of the same things, and those are such as concern 
our great interest, the precept comes home to this very 
circumstance; and St. Paul calls it, “ praying without 
ceasing,”']' and himself in his own case gave a precedent, 
“ For this cause I besought the Lord thrice.” And so did 
our blessed Lord : he went thrice to God on the same er¬ 
rand, with the same words, in a short space, about half a 
night; for his time to solicit his suit was but short. And 
the Philippians were remembered by the apostle, their 
spiritual Father, “ always in every prayer of his.”:j: And 
thus we must always pray for the pardon of our sins, for 
the assistance of God’s grace, for charity, for life eternal, 
never giving over, till we die : and thus also we pray for sup¬ 
ply of great temporal needs in their several proportions ; in 
all cases being curious, we do not give over, out of weariness 
or impatience. For God oftentimes defers to grant our 
suit; because he loves to hear us beg it, and hath a design 
to give us more than we ask, even a satisfaction of our de¬ 
sires, and a blessing for the very importunity. 

8. Let the words of our prayers be pertinent, grave, ma¬ 
terial, not studiously many, but according to our need, 
sufficient to express our wants, and to signify our impor¬ 
tunity. God hears us not the sooner for our many words, 
but much the sooner for an earnest desire; to which let 
apt and sufficient words minister, be they few or many, 
according as it happens. A long prayer and a short, differ 
not in their capacities of being accepted; for both of # them 
take their value according to the fervency of spirit, and the 
charity of the prayer. That prayer which is short, by rea¬ 
son of an impatient spirit, or dulness, or despite of holy 

* Luke xviii. 1; xxi. 36. t 1 Thess.v. 17. t Phil. i. 4. 


OF PRAYER. 


201 

things, or indifferency of desires, is very often criminal, al¬ 
ways imperfect; and that prayer, which is long out of os¬ 
tentation, or superstition, or a trifling spirit, is as criminal 
and imperfect as the other, in their several instances. This 
rule relates to private prayer. In public, our devotion is 
to be measured by the appointed office, and we are to sup¬ 
port our spirit with spiritual arts, that our private spirit 
may be a part of the public spirit, and be adopted into the 
society and blessings of the communion of saints. 

9. In all forms of prayer, mingle petition with thanksgiv¬ 
ing, that you may endear the present prayer and the future 
blessing, by returning praise and thanks, for what we have 
already received. This is St. Paul’s advice, “ Be careful 
for nothing; but, in every thing, by prayer and supplica¬ 
tion with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known 
unto God.” # 

10. Whatever we beg of God, let us also work for it; 
if the thing be matter of duty, or a consequent to industry. 
For God loves to bless labour and to reward it, but not to 
support idleness. And, therefore, our blessed Saviour, in 
his sermons, joins watchfulness with prayer; for God’s 
graces are but assistances, not new creations of the whole 
habit, in every instant or period of our life. Read Scrip¬ 
tures ; and then pray to God for understanding. Pray 
against temptation : but you must also resist the devil, and 
then he will flee from you. Ask of God competency of 
living: but you must also work with your hands the things 
that are honest, that ye may have to supply in time of need. 
We can but do our endeavour, and pray for a blessing, and 
then leave the success with God : and beyond this, we can¬ 
not deliberate, we cannot take care ; but so far, we must. 

11. To this purpose let every man study his prayers, 
and read his duty in his petitions. For the body of ^ur 
prayer is the sum of our duty : and, as we must ask of 
God whatsoever we need ; so we must labour for all that 
we ask. Because it is our duty, therefore we must pray 
for God’s grace : but because God’s grace is necessary, 
and without it we can do nothing, we are sufficiently taught, 
that in the proper matter of our religious prayers is the 
just matter of our duty; and if we shall turn our prayers 
into precepts, we shall the easier turn our hearty desires 
into effective practices. 

* Phil. iv. 6. 


202 


OF PRAYER. 


12. In all prayers, we must be careful to attend oui 
present work, having 1 a present mind, not wandering upon 
inpertinent things, not distant from our words, much less 
contrary to them: and if our thoughts do at any time wan¬ 
der, and divert upon other objects, bring them back again 
with prudent and severe arts; by all means striving to obtain 
a diligent, a sober, an untroubled, and a composed spirit. 

13. Let your posture and gesture of body in prayers be 
reverent, grave, and humble : according to public order, 
or the best examples, if it be in public : if it be in private, 
either stand, or kneel, or lie flat upon the ground on your 
face, in your ordinary and more solemn prayers ; but in ex¬ 
traordinary, casual, and ejaculatory prayers, the reverence 
and devotion of the soul, and the lifting up the eyes and 
hands to God with any other posture not indecent, is usual 
and commendable; for we may pray in bed, on horseback, 
“ every where,”* and at all times, and in all circumstances ; 
and it is well if we do so: and some servants have not op¬ 
portunity to pray so often as they would, unless they supply 
the appetites of religion by such accidental devotions. 

14. “ Let prayers and supplications and giving of thanks 
be made for all men ; for kings, and all that are in autho¬ 
rity. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God 
our Saviour.”f We, who must love our neighbours as 
ourselves, must also pray for them as for ourselves: with 
this only difference ; that we may enlarge in our temporal 
desires for kings, and pray for secular prosperity to them 
with more importunity than for ourselves; because they 
need more to enable their duty and government, and for 
the interests of religion and justice. This part of prayer 
is by the apostle called intercession ; in which, with spe¬ 
cial care, we are to remember our relatives, our family, our 
ch^ge, our benefactors, our creditors; not forgetting to 
beg pardon and charity for oui enemies, and protection 
against them. 

15. Rely not on a single prayer in matters of great con¬ 
cernment ; but make it as public as you can, by obtaining 
of others to pray for you: this being the great blessing of 
the communion of saints, that a prayer united is strong, 
like a well-ordered army; and God loves to be tied fast 
with such cords of love, and constrained by a holy violence. 

16. Every time, that is not seized upon by some other 

* 1 Tim. ii. 8. t 1 Tim. ii. 2. 


OF PRAYER. 


203 


duty, is seasonable enough for prayer: but let it be per¬ 
formed as a solemn duty morning and evening, that God 
may begin and end all our business, and “ the outgoing of 
the morning and evening may praise himfor so we bless 
God, and God blesses us. And yet fail not to find, or 
make opportunities to worship God at some other times of 
the day ; at least by ejaculations and short addresses, more 
or less, longer or shorter, solemnly or without solemnity, 
privately or publicly, as you can, or are permitted: always 
remembering, that as every sin is a degree of danger and 
unsafety ; so every pious prayer and well-employed oppor¬ 
tunity is a degree of return to hope and pardon. 

Cautions for making Vows. 

17. A vow to God is an act of prayer, and a great de¬ 
gree and instance of importunity, and an increase of duty, 
by some new uncommanded instance, or some more emi¬ 
nent degree of duty, or frequency of action, or earnestness 
of spirit in the same. And because it hath pleased God, 
in all ages of the world, to admit of intercourse with his 
servants in the matters of vows, it is not ill advice, that 
we make vows to God in such cases in which we have 
great need, or great danger. But let it be done according 
to these rules and by these cautions. 

1. That the matter of the vow be lawful. 2. That it be 
useful, in order to religion or charity. 3. That it be grave, 
not trifling or impertinent; but great in our proportion of duty 
towards the blessing. 4. That it be in an uncommanded in¬ 
stance ; that is, that it be of something, or in some manner, 
or in some degree, to which formerly we were not obliged, 
or which we might have omitted, without sin. 5. That 
it be done with prudence ; that is, that it be safe in all the 
circumstances of person, lest we beg a blessing, and fall 
into a snare. 6. That every vow of a new action be also 
accompanied with a new degree and enforcement of our 
essential and unalterable duty: such as was Jacob’s vow, 
that (besides the payment of a tithe) God should be his 
God: that so he might strengthen his duty to him, first in 
essentials and precepts, and then, in additionals and acci¬ 
dentals. For it is but an ill tree, that spends more in 
leaves and suckers and gums, than in fruit: and that thank¬ 
fulness and religion is best, that first secures duty, and 
then enlarges in counsels. Therefore let every great 


204 


OF PRAYER. 


prayer, and great need, and great danger, draw us nearer 
to God by the approach of a pious purpose to live more 
strictly: and let every mercy of God, answering that 
prayer, produce a real, performance of it. 7. Let not 
young beginners in religion enlarge their hearts and 
straiten their liberty by vows of long continuance : nor 
indeed any one else, without a great experince of himself, 
and of all accidental dangers. Vows of single actions are 
safest, and proportionable to those single blessings ever 
begged in such cases of sudden and transient importunities. 

8. Let no action, which is matter of question and dis¬ 
pute in religion, ever become the matter of a vow. He 
vows foolishly, that promises to God to live and die in such 
an opinion, in an article not necessary, nor certain; or that, 
upon confidence of his present guide, binds himself for ever 
to the profession of what he may afterward, more reasonably 
contradict, or may find not to be useful or not profitable, 
but of some danger, or of no necessity. 

If we observe the former rules, we shall pray piously 
and effectually : but, because even this duty hath in it 
some special temptations, it is necessary, that we be armed 
by special remedies against them. The dangers are, 

1. Wandering thoughts; 2. Tediousness of spirit. Against 
the first, these advices are profitable. 

Remedies against wandering Thoughts in Prayer . 

If we feel our spirits apt to wander in our prayers, and 
to retire into the world, or to things unprofitable, or vain 
and impertinent— 

1. Use prayer to be assisted in prayer; pray for the 
spirit of supplication, for a sober, fixed, and recollected 
spirit; and when to this you add a moral industry to be 
steady in your thoughts, whatsoever wanderings after this 
do return irremediably, are a misery of nature, and an im¬ 
perfection, but no sin, while it is not cherished and in¬ 
dulged to. 

2. In private, it is not amiss to attempt the cure by re¬ 
ducing your prayers into collects and short forms of prayer, 
making voluntary interruptions, and beginning again, that 
the want of spirit and breath may be supplied by the short 
stages and periods. 

3. When you have observed any considerable wander- 


OF PRAYER. 


205 

ing of your thoughts, bind yourself to repeat that prayer 
again with actual attention, or else revolve the full sense of 
it in your spirit, and repeat it in all the effect and desires 
of it: and, possibly, the tempter may be driven away with 
his own art, and may cease to interpose nis iriiles, when he 
perceives, they do but vex the person into carefulness and 
piety • and yet he loses nothing of his devotion, but doubles 
the earnestness of his care. 

4. If this be not seasonable or opportune, or apt to any 
man ? s circumstances, yet be sure, with actual attention, to 
say a hearty Amen to the whole prayer with one united 
desire, earnestly begging the graces mentioned in the 
prayer : for that desire does the great work of the prayer, 
and secures the blessing, if the wandering thoughts were 
against our will, and disclaimed by contending against 
them. 

5. Avoid multiplicity of business of the world ; and in 
those that are unavoidable, labour for an evenness and tran¬ 
quillity of spirit, that you may be untroubled and smooth, 
in all tempests of fortune : for so we shall better tend reli¬ 
gion, when we are not torn in pieces with the cares of the 
world, and seized upon with low affections, passions, and 
interest. 

6. It helps much to attention and actual advertisement in 
our prayers, if we say our prayers silently, without the voice, 
only by the spirit. For, in mental prayer, if our thoughts 
wander, we only stand still; when our mind returns, we go 
on again: there is none of the prayer lost, as it is, if our 
mouths speak, and our hearts wander. 

7. To incite you to the use of these or any other coun¬ 
sels you shall meet with, remember, that it is a great in¬ 
decency to desire of God to hear those prayers, a great 
part whereof we do not hear ourselves. If they be not 
worthy of our attention, they are far more unworthy of 
God’s. 

Signs of Tediousness of Spirit in our Prayers and all 

Actions of Religion . 

The second temptation in our prayer, is a tediousness 
of spirit, or a weariness of the employment; like that of 
the Jews, who complained, that they were weary of the new 
moons, and their souls loathed the frequent return of their 
sabbaths: so do very many Christians, who, first, pray 

U 


OF PRAYER. 


20 e 

without fervour and earnestness of spirit; and, secondly, 
meditate but seldom, and that without fruit, or sense, or 
affection; or, thirdly, who seldom examine their con¬ 
sciences, and when they do it, they do it but sleepily, 
slightly, without compunction, or hearty purpose, or fruits 
of amendment. 4. They enlarge themselves in the thoughts 
and fruition of temporal things, running for comfort to them 
only in any sadness and misfortune. 5. They love not to 
frequent the sacraments, nor any the instruments of reli¬ 
gion, as sermons, confessions, prayers in public fastings, 
but love ease, and a loose undisciplined life. 6. They 
obey not their superiors, but follow their own judgment, 
when their judgment follows their affections, and their af¬ 
fections follow sense, and worldly pleasures. 7. They 
neglect or dissemble, or defer, or do not attend to, the 
motions and inclinations to virtue, which the Spirit of God 
puts into their soul. 8. They repent them of their vows 
and holy purposes, not because they discover any indis¬ 
cretion in them, or intolerable inconvenience, but because 
they have within them labour, (as the case now stands,) to 
them displeasure. 9. They content themselves with the 
first degrees and necessary parts of virtue; and, when they 
are arrived thither, they sit down, as if they were come to 
the mountain of the Lord, and care not to proceed on to¬ 
ward perfection. 10. They inquire into all cases, in which 
it may be lawful to omit a duty; and, though they will 
not do less than they are bound to, yet they will do no 
more than needs must; for they do out of fear and self- 
love, not out of the love of God, or the spirit of holiness 
and zeal. The event of which will be this: he, that will 
do no more than needs must, will soon be brought to omit 
something of his duty, and will be apt to believe less to be 
necessary, than is. 

Remedies against Tediousness of Spirit. 

The remedies against this temptation are these :— 

1. Order your private devotions so, that they become 
not arguments and causes of tediousness by their indis¬ 
creet length; but reduce your words into a narrower com¬ 
pass, still keeping all the matter, and what is cut off in the 
length of your prayers, supply in the earnestness of your 
spirit: for so nothing is lost, while the words are changed 
into matter, and length of time into fervency of devotion. 


or r ray jr n. 


207 

The forms are made not the less perfect, and the spirit is 
more, and the scruple is removed. 

2. It is not imprudent, if we provide variety of forms of 
prayer to the same purposes, that the change, by consult¬ 
ing with the appetites of fancy may better entertain the 
spirit: and, possibly, we may be pleased to recite a hymn, 
when a collect seems flat to us and unpleasant; and we 
are willing to sing rather than to say, or to sing this rather 
than that: we are certain that variety is delightful; and 
whether that be natural to us, or an imperfection, yet if 
it be complied with, it may rehaove some part of the 
temptation. 

3. Break your office and devotion into fragments, and 
make frequent returnings by ejaculations and abrupt inter¬ 
courses with God; for so, no length can oppress your ten¬ 
derness and sickliness of spirit; and, by often praying in 
such manner, and in all circumstances, we shall habituate 
our souls to prayer, by making it the business of many 
lesser portions of our time ; and, by thrusting it in between 
all our other employments, it will make every thing relish of 
religion, and by degrees turn all into its nature. 

4. Learn to abstract your thoughts and desires from 
pleasures and things of this world. For nothing is a direct 
cure to this evil, but cutting off’ all other loves and adhe- 
rences. Order your affairs so, that religion may be pro¬ 
pounded to you as a reward, and prayer as your defence, and 
holy actions as your security, and charity and good works 
as your treasure. Consider that all things else are satisfac¬ 
tions but to the brutish part of a man ; and that these are 
the refreshments and relishes of that noble part of us, by 
which we are better than beasts, and whatsoever other in¬ 
strument, exercise, or consideration, is of use to take our 
loves from the world, the same is apt to place them upon 
God. 

5. Do not seek for deliciousness and sensible consola 
tions in the actions of religion; but only regard the duty 
and the conscience of it. For, although in the beginning 
of religion, most frequently, and, at some other times, irre¬ 
gularly, God complies with our infirmity, and encourages 
our duty with little overflowings of spiritual joy, and sensi¬ 
ble pleasure, and delicacies in prayer, so as we seem to 
feel some little beam of heaven, and great refreshments 


208 


OF PRAYER. 


from the Spirit of consolation ; yet this is not always safe 
for us to have, neither safe for us to expect and look for : 
and when we do, it is apt to make us cool in our inquiries 
and waitings upon Christ, when we want them: it is a run¬ 
ning after him, not for the miracles, but for the loaves; 
not for the wonderful things of God, and the desires of 
pleasing him, but for the pleasure of pleasing ourselves. 
And, as we must not judge our devotion to be barren or 
unfruitful, when we want the overflowings of joy running 
over : so neither must we cease, for want of them. If our 
spirits can serve God choosingly and greedily, out of pure 
conscience of our duty, it is better in itself, and more safe 
to us. 

6. Let him use to soften his spirit with frequent medita- 
tation upon sad and dolorous objects, as of death, the ter¬ 
rors of the day of judgment, fearful judgments upon sin¬ 
ners, strange horrid accidents, fear of God’s wrath, the 
pains of hell, the unspeakable amazements of the damned, 
the intolerable load of a sad eternity. For whatsoever creates 
fear, or makes the spirit to dwell in a religious sadness, is 
apt to entender the spirit, and make it devout and pliant to 
any part of duty. For a great fear, when it is ill managed, 
is the parent of superstition ; but a discreet and well-guided 
fear produces religion. 

7. Pray often and you shall pray oftener; and, when 
you are accustomed to a frequent devotion, it will so in¬ 
sensibly unite to your nature and affections, that it will 
become trouble to omit your usual or appointed prayers: 
and what you obtain, at first, by doing violence to your 
inclinations, at last, will not be left, without as great un¬ 
willingness, as that, by which at first it entered. This rule 
relies not only upon reason derived from the nature of ha¬ 
bits, which turn into a second nature, and make their ac¬ 
tions easy, frequent, and delightful, but it relies upon a 
reason, depending upon the nature and constitution of 
grace ; whose productions are of the same nature with the 
parent, and increases itself, naturally growing from grains 
to huge trees, from minutes to vast proportions, and from 
moments to eternity. But be sure not to omit your usual 
prayers without great reason, though, without sin, it may 
be done; because after you have omitted something, in a 
little while you will be past the scruple of that, and begin 


OF PRAYER. 


209 


to be tempted to leave out more. Keep yourself up to 
your usual forms : you may enlarge, when you will ; but 
do not contract or lessen them, without a very probable 
reason. 

8. Let a man, frequently and seriously, by imagination, 
place himself upon his death-bed, and consider what great 
joys he shall have for the remembrance of every day well 
spent, and what then he would give that he had so spent 
all his days. He may guess at it by proportions: for it is 
certain, he shall have a joyful and prosperous night, who 
hath spent his day holily ; and he resigns his soul with 
peace into the hands of God, who hath lived in the peace 
*>f God and the works of religion, in his life-time. This 
consideration is of a real event; it is of a thing, that will 
certainly come to pass. “ It is appointed for all men once 
to dieand, after death, comes judgment; the apprehension 
of which is dreadful, and the presence of it is intolerable ; 
unless, by religion and sanctity, we are disposed for so ve¬ 
nerable an appearance. 

9. To this may be useful, that we consider the easiness 
of Christ’s yoke, the excellencies and sweetnesses that are 
in religion, the peace of conscience, the joy of the Holy 
Ghost, the rejoicing in God, the simplicity and pleasure of 
virtue, the intricacy, trouble, and business of sin; the 
blessings, and health, and reward of that; the curses, the 
sicknesses, and sad consequences of this; and that, if we 
are weary of the labours of religion, we must eternally sit 
still, and do nothing: for whatsoever we do contrary to it, 
is infinitely more full of labour, care, difficulty, and vex¬ 
ation. 

10. Consider this also, that tediousness of spirit is the 
beginning of the most dangerous condition and estate in 
the whole world. For it is a great disposition to the sin 
against the Holy Ghost: it is apt to bring a man to back¬ 
sliding and the state of unregeneration ; to make him re¬ 
turn to his vomit and his sink ; and either to make the man 
impatient, or his condition scrupulous, unsatisfied, irksome, 
and desperate : and it is better, that he had never known 
the way of godliness, than, after the knowledge of it, that 
he should fall away. There is not in the world a greater 
sign that the spirit of reprobation is beginning upon a man, 
than when he is habitually and constantly, or very frequent¬ 
ly, w r eary, and slights, or loathes, holy offices. 

u 2 


OF ALMS. 


210 

11. The last remedy that preserves the hope of such a 
man, and can reduce him to the state of zeal and the love 
of God, is a pungent, sad, and a heavy affliction; not des¬ 
perate, but recreated with some intervals of kindness, or 
little comforts, or entertained with hopes of deliverance; 
which condition if a man shall fall into, by the grace of God 
he is likely to recover; but, if this help him not, it is infi¬ 
nite odds, but he will quench the Spirit. 

SECTION VIII. 

Of Alms. 

Love is as communicative as fire, as busy and as active, 
and it hath four twin-daughters, extreme like each other; 
and but that the doctors of the school have done, as Tha- 
mar’s midwife did, who bound a scarlet thread, something 
to distinguish them, it would be very hard to call them 
asunder. Their names are, 1 . Mercy; 2. Beneficence, or 
well-doing; 3. Liberality ; and, 4. Alms ; which, by a spe¬ 
cial privilege, hath obtained to be called after the mother’s 
name, and is commonly called charity. The first or eldest 
is seated in the affectipn ; and it is that which all the other 
must attend. For mercy without alms is acceptable, when 
the person is disabled to express outwardly, what he hear¬ 
tily desires. But alms, without mercy, are like prayers 
without devotion, or religion without humility. 2. Bene¬ 
ficence, or well-doing, is a promptness and nobleness of 
mind, making us to do offices of courtesy and humanity to 
all sorts of persons in their need, or out of their need. 3. 
Liberality is a disposition of mind opposite to covetous¬ 
ness ; and consists in the despite and neglect of money 
upon just occasions, and relates to our friends, children, 
kindred, servants, and other relatives. 4. But alms is a 
relieving the poor and needy. The first and the last only 
are duties of Christianity. The second and third are cir¬ 
cumstances and adjuncts of these duties: for liberality in¬ 
creases the degree of alms, making our gift greater; and 
beneficence extends it to more persons and orders of men, 
spreading it wider. The former makes us sometimes to 
give more than we are able; and the latter gives to more 
than need by the necessity of beggars, and serves the needs 
and conveniences of persons, and supplies circumstances : 
whereas, properly, alms are doles and largesses to the ne- 


OF ALMS. 


211 

cessitous and calamitous people, supplying the necessities 
of nature, and giving remedies to their miseries. 

Mercy and alms are the body and soul of that charity, 
which we must pay to our neighbour’s need : and it is a 
precept, which God therefore enjoined to the world, that 
the great inequality, which he was pleased to suffer in the 
possessions and accidents of men, might be reduced to 
some temper and evenness; and the most miserable per¬ 
son might be reconciled to some sense and participation of 
felicity. 

Works of Mercy , or the several Kinds of Corporal Alms. 

The works of mercy are so many, as the affections of 
mercy have objects, or as the world hath kinds of misery. 
Men want meat, or drink, or clothes, or a house, or liberty, 
or attendance, or a grave. In proportion to these, seven 
works are usually assigned to mercy, and there are seven 
kinds of corporal alms reckoned. 1. To feed the hungry.* 
2. To give drink to the thirsty. 3. Or clothes to the naked. 
4. To redeem captives. 5. To visit the sick. 6. To en¬ 
tertain strangers. 7. To bury the dead. - } - But many more 
may be added. Such as are, 8. To give physic to sick per¬ 
sons. 9. To bring cold and starved people to warmth, and 
to the fire : for some times clothing will not do it; or this may be 
done, when we cannot do the other. 10. To lead the blind 
in right ways. 11. To lend money. 12. To forgive debts. 
13. To remit forfeitures. 14. To mend highways and 
bridges. 15. To reduce or guide wandering travellers. 
16. To ease their labours, by accommodating their work 
with apt instruments; or their journey, with beasts of car¬ 
riage. 17. To deliver the poor from their oppressors. 18. 
To die for thy brother. 19. To pay maidens’dowries, and 
to procure for them honest and chaste marriages. 

Works of Spiritual Alms and Mercy are , 

1. To teach the ignorant. 2. To counsel doubting per¬ 
sons. 3. To admonish sinners diligently, prudently, sea¬ 
sonably, and charitably: to which also may be reduced, 
provoking and encouraging to good works.J 4. To com¬ 
fort the afflicted. 5. To pardon offenders. 6. To succour 
and support the weak.§ 7. To pray for all estates of men, 


* Matt. xxv. 35. 
t Heb. x. 24. 


t Matt xxvi. 12. 2 Sara. a. 5 

$ l Thess. v. 14. 


212 


OF ALMS. 


and for relief to all their necessities. To which may be 
added, 8. To punish or correct refractoriness. 9. To be 
gentle and charitable, in censuring the actions of others. 
10. To establish the scrupulous, wavering, and inconstant 
spirits. 11. To confirm the strong. 12. Not to give scan¬ 
dal. 13. To quit a man of his fear. 14. To redeem maid¬ 
ens from prostitution and publication of their bodies. 

To both these kinds, a third also may be added of a 
mixed nature, partly corporal, and partly spiritual: such 
are, 1. Reconciling enemies. 2. Erecting public schools 
of learning. 3. Maintaining lectures of divinity. 4. Erect¬ 
ing colleges of religion and retirement from the noises and 
more frequent temptations of the world. 5. Finding em¬ 
ployment for unbusied persons, and putting children to 
honest trades. For the particulars of mercy or alms can¬ 
not be narrower, than men’s needs are : and the old me¬ 
thod of alms is too narrow to comprise them all; and yet 
the kinds are too many to be discoursed of particularly : 
only our blessed Saviour, in the precept of alms, uses the 
instances of relieving the poor, and forgiveness of injuries; 
and by proportion to these, the rest, whose duty is plain, 
simple, easy, and necessary, may be determined. But 
alms, in general, are to be disposed of, according to the 
following rules. 

Rules for giving Alms . 

1. Let no man do alms of that, which is none of his own ; 
for of that he is to make restitution ; that is due to the 
owners, not to the poor: for every man hath need of his 
own, and that is first to be provided for: and then you 
must think of the needs of the poor. He, that gives the 
poor what is not his own, makes himself a thief, and the 
poor to be the receivers. This is not to be understood, 
as if it were unlawful for a man, that is not able to pay his 
debts, to give smaller alms to the poor. He may not give 
such portions, as can in any sense more disable him to do 
justice ;* but such, which, if they were saved, could not 
advance the other duty, may retire to this, and do here 
what they may, since, in the other duty, they cannot do 
what they should. But, generally, cheaters and robbers 
cannot give alms of what they have cheated and robbed, 
unless they cannot tell the persons, whom they have in 

* Prov. iii. 9. 


OF ALMS. 


213 

jured, or the proportions; and, in such cases, they are to 
give those unknown portions to the poor by way of resti¬ 
tution, for it is no alms: only God is the supreme Lord, 
to whom those escheats devolve, and the poor are his 
receivers. 

2. Of money unjustly taken, and yet voluntarily parted 
with, we may, and are bound to, give alms: such as is 
money given and taken for false witness, bribes, simo- 
niacal contracts; because the receiver hath no right to 
keep it, nor the giver any right to recall it; it is unjust 
money, and yet payable to none but the supreme Lord 
(who is the person injured) and to his delegates, that is, 
the poor. To which I insert these cautions. 1. If the 
person injured by the unjust sentence of a bribed judge, 
or by false witness, be poor, he is the proper object and bo¬ 
som to whom the restitution is to be made. 2. In case of 
simony, theVhurch, to whom the simony was injurious, is 
the lap, into which the restitution is to be poured ; and if 
it be poor, and out of repair, the alms, or restitution (shall 
I call it?) are to be paid to it. 

3. There is some sort of gain, that hath in it no injustice, 
properly so called; but it is unlawful and filthy lucre: 
such as is money taken for work done unlawfully upon the 
Lord’s day; hire taken for disfiguring one’s-self, and for 
being professed jesters; the wages of such as make unjust 
bargains; and of harlots: of this money there is some 
preparation to be made, before it be given in alms. The 
money is infected with the plague, and must pass through 
the fire or the water, before it be fit for alms: the person 
must repent and leave the crime, and then minister to the 
poor. 

4. He that gives alms, must do it in mercy ; that is, out 
of a true sense of .the calamity of his brother, first feeling 
it in himself, in some proportion, and then endeavouring 
to ease himself and the other of their common calamity. 
Against this rule they offend who give alms out of custom; 
or to upbraid the poverty of the other ; or to make him 
mercenary and obliged; or*with any unhandsome circum¬ 
stances. 

5. He that gives alms, must do it with a single eye and 
heart, that is, without designs to get the praise of men; 
and, if he secures that, he may either give them publicly 
or privately : for Christ intended only to provide against 


214 


OF ALMS. 


pride and hypocrisy, when he bade alms to be given in se¬ 
cret ; it being otherwise one of his commandments, “ that 
our light should shine before menthis is more excellent; 
that is more safe. 

6. To this also appertains, that he who hath done a 
good turn, should so forget it, as not to speak of it: but he 
that boasts it, or upbraids it, hath paid himself, and lost the 
nobleness of the charity. 

7. Give alms with a cheerful heart and countenance; 
“ not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful 
giver;”* and therefore give quickly, when the power is in 
thy hand, and the need is in thy neighbour, and thy neigh¬ 
bour at thy door. He gives twice that relieves speedily. 

8. According to thy ability, give to all men that need :f 
and, in equal needs, to give first to good men, rather than to 
bad men; and if the needs be unequal, do so too; pro¬ 
vided that the need of the poorest be not violent or ex¬ 
treme : but, if an evil man be in extreme necessity, he is 
to be relieved, rather than a good man, who can tarry 
longer, and may subsist without it. And, if he be a good 
man, he will desire it should be so: because himself is 
bound to save the life of his brother with doing some in¬ 
convenience to himself: and no difference of virtue or 
vice can make the ease of one beggar equal with the life of 
another. 

9. Give no alms to vicious persons, if such alms will 
support their sin : as if they will continue in idleness; “ if 
they will not work, neither let them eat or if they will 
spend it in drunkenness, or wantonness : such persons, 
when they are reduced to very great want, must be reliev¬ 
ed in such proportions, as may not relieve their dying lust, 
but may refresh their faint or dying bodies. 

10. The best objects of charity are poor housekeepers, 
that labour hard, and are burdened with many children, 
or gentlemen fallen into sad poverty, especially if by inno¬ 
cent misfortune; (and if their crimes brought them into it, 
yet they are to be relieved according to the former rule:) 
persecuted persons, widows, and fatherless children, put¬ 
ting them to honest trades or schools of learning. And 
search into the needs of numerous and meaner families: 
for there are many persons that have nothing left them but 


* 2 Cor. ix. 7. t Luke vi. 30. Gal. vi. 10. t 2 Thes. iii. 10. 


OF ALMS. 


215 


nisery and modesty : and towards such we must add two 
circumstances of charity. 1. To inquire them out; 2. To 
convey our relief unto them, so as we do not make them 
ashamed. 

11. Give, looking for nothing again ; that is, without con¬ 
sideration of future advantages: give to children, to old 
men, to the unthankful, and the dying, and to those you 
shall never see again ; for else your alms or courtesy is not 
charity, but traffic and merchandise ; and be sure, that you 
omit not to relieve the needs of your enemy and the inju¬ 
rious ; for so, possibly, you may win him to yourself; but 
do you intend the winning him to God. 

12. Trust not your alms to intermedial, uncertain, and 
under-dispensers : by which rule is not only intended the 
securing your alms in the right channel; but the humility 
of your person, and that, which the apostle calls “ the la¬ 
bour of love.” And if you converse in hospitals and alms¬ 
houses, and minister with your own hand, what your heart 
hath first decreed, you will find your heart endeared and 
made familiar with the needs and with the persons of the 
poor, those excellent images of Christ. 

13. Whatsoever is superfluous in thy estate, is to be dis¬ 
pensed in alms. “ He, that hath two coats, must give to 
him that hath none;” that is, he, that hath beyond his 
need, must give that which is beyond it. Only among 
needs, we are to reckon not only what will support our life, 
but also what will maintain the decency of our estate and 
person; not only in present needs, but in all future neces¬ 
sities, and very probable contingencies, but no farther: 
we are not obliged beyond this, unless we see very great, 
public, and calamitous necessities. But yet, if we do extend 
beyond our measures, and give more than we are able, we 
have the Philippians and many holy persons for our pre¬ 
cedent; we have St. Paul for our encouragement; we have 
Christ for our counsellor; we have God for our rewarder; 
and a great treasure in heaven for our recompense and 
restitution. But I propound it to the consideration of all 
Christian people, that they be not nice and curious, fond 
and indulgent to themselves in taking accounts of their 
personal conveniences: and that they make their propor¬ 
tions moderate and easy, according to the order and man¬ 
ner of Christianity : and the consequent will be this, that 
the poor will more plentifully be relieved, themselves will 


216 


OF ALMS. 


be more able to do it, and the duty will be less chargeable, 
and the owners of estates charged with fewer accounts in 
the spending them. It cannot be denied, but, in the ex¬ 
penses of all liberal and great personages, many things 
might be spared; some superfluous servants, some idle 
meetings, some unnecessary and imprudent feasts, some 
garments too costly, some unnecessary lawsuits, some vain 
journeys: and, when we are tempted to such needless ex¬ 
penses, if we shall descend to moderation, and lay aside 
the surplusage, we shall find it with more profit to be laid 
out upon the poor members of Christ, than upon our own 
with vanity. But this is only intended to be an ad\jce in 
the manner of doing alms : for I am not ignorant, that great 
variety of clothes always have been permitted to princes 
and nobility and others, in their proportion; and they 
usually give those clothes as rewards to servants, and other 
persons needful enough ; and then they may serve their 
own fancy and their duty too: but it is but reason and re¬ 
ligion to be careful that they be given to such only, where 
duty, or prudent liberality, or alms, determine them ; but, 
in no sense, let them do it so, as to minister to vanity, to 
luxury, to prodigality. The like also is to be observed in 
other instances ; and if we once give our minds to the study 
and arts of alms, we shall find ways enough to make this 
duty easy, profitable, and useful. 

1. He, that plays at any game, must resolve beforehand, 
to be indifferent to win or lose : but if he gives to the poor 
all that he wins, it is better than to keep it to himself: but 
it were better yet, that he lay by so much, as he is willing 
to lose, and let the game alone, and by giving so much alms, 
traffic for eternity. That is one way. 

2. Another is keeping the fasting-days of the church; 
which if our condition be such as to be able to cast our ac¬ 
counts, and make abatements for our wanting so many 
meals in the whole year, (which by the old appointment 
did amount to one hundred and fifty-three, and since most 
of them are fallen into desuetude, we may make up as 
many of them as we please, by voluntary fasts,) we may, 
from hence, find a considerable relief for the poor. But if 
we be not willing sometimes to fast, that our brother may 
eat, we should ill die for him. St. Martin had given all 
that he had in the world to the poor save one coat; ai=d 
that also he divided between two beggars. A father, in t* » 


OF ALMS. 


21? 


mount of Nitria, was reduced at last to the inventory of 
one Testament; and that book also was tempted from him 
by the needs of one whom he thought poorer than him¬ 
self. Greater yet: St. Paulinus sold himself to slavery 
to redeem a young man, for whose captivity his mother 
wept sadly: and it is said, that St. Katharine sucked the 
envenomed wounds of a villain, who had injured her most 
impudently. And 1 shall tell you of a greater charity than 
all these put together: Christ gave himself to shame and 
death to redeem his enemies from bondage, and death, 
and hell. 

3. Learn of the frugal man, and only avoid sordid ac¬ 
tions, and turn good husbands, and change your arts of get¬ 
ting into providence for the poor, and you shall soon become 
rich in good works: and why should we not do as much for 
charity, as for covetousness; for heaven, as for the fading 
world; for God and the holy Jesus, as for the needless su¬ 
perfluities of back and belly ? 

14. In giving alms to beggars and persons of that low 
rank, it is better to give little to each, that we may give 
to the more; so extending our alms to many persons : but 
in charities of religion, as building hospitals, colleges, and 
houses for devotion, and supplying the accidental wants of 
decayed persons, fallen from great plenty to great neces¬ 
sity, it is better to unite our alms, than to disperse them : 
to make a noble relief or maintenance to one, to and restore 
him to comfort, than to support only his natural needs, and 
keep him alive only, unrescued from sad discomforts. 

15. The precept of alms or charity binds not indefinitely 
to all the instances and kinds of charity: for he that de¬ 
lights to feed the poor, and spends all his portion that way, 
is not bound to enter into prisons and redeem captives: but 
we are obliged, by the presence of circumstances, and the 
special disposition of Providence, and the pitiableness of 
an object, to this or that particular act of charity. The eye 
is the sense of mercy ; and the bowels are its organ; and 
that enkindles pity, and pity produces alms : when the 
eye sees what it never saw, the he’art will think what it 

* never thought: but, when we have an object present to out 
eye, then we must pity; for there the providence of God 
hath fitted our charity with circumstances. He, that is ir 
thy sight or in thy neighbourhood, is fallen into the lot of 
thy charity. 


X 


218 


OF ALMS. 


16. If thou hast no money,* yet thou must have mercy 
and art bound to pity the poor, and pray for them, and 
throw thy holy desires and devotions into the treasure of 
the church : and if thou dost what thou art able, be it little 
or great, corporal or spiritual, the charity of alms or the 
charity of prayers, a cup of wine or a cup of water, if it be 
but love to the brethren,f or a desire to help all or any of 
Christ’s poor, it shall be accepted according to that a man 
hath, not according to that he hath not4 For lore is all 
this, and all the other commandments : and it will express 
itself, where it can; and where it cannot, yet it is love still; 
and it is also sorrow, that it cannot. 

Motives to Charity. 

The motives to this duty are such, as Holy Scripture 
hath propounded to us by way of consideration and propo¬ 
sition of its excellencies and consequent reward. 1. There is 
no one duty, which our blessed Saviour did recommend to 
his disciples with so repeated an injunction, as this of cha¬ 
rity and alms.§ To which add the words spoken by our 
Lord, “ It is better to give than to receive.” And when 
we consider, how great a blessing it is, that we beg not 
from door to door, it is a ready instance of our thank¬ 
fulness to God, for his sake to relieve them, that do. 
2. This duty is that alone, whereby the future day of judg¬ 
ment shall be transacted. For nothing but charity and 
alms is that, whereby Christ shall declare the justice and 
mercy of the eternal sentence. Martyrdom itself is not 
there expressed, and no otherwise involved, but as it is the 
greatest charity. 3. Christ made himself the greatest and 
daily example of alms or charity. He went up and down 
doing good, preaching the gospel, and healing all diseases: 
and God the Father is imitable by us in nothing, but in 
purity and mercy. 4. Alms, given to the poor, redound 
to the emolument of the giver, both temporal and eternal.|| 
5. They are instrumental to the remission of sins. Our 
forgiveness and mercy to others being made the very rule 
and proportion of our confidence, and hope, and our prayer, 
to be forgiven ourselves.1T 6. It is a treasure in heaven ;« 
it procures friends, when we die. It is reckoned, as done 

* Luke xii. 2. Acts iii. 6. t 1 Pet. i. 22. J 2 Cor. viii. 12. 

$ Matt. vi. 4. Matt, xiii. 12. 33 ; xxv. 15. Luke xi. 41. 

H Phil. iv. 17. IT Acts x. 4. Heb. xiii. 16. Dan. tv. 27. 


OF ALMS 


219 


to Christ, whatsoever we do to our poor brother: and, 
therefore, when a poor man begs for Christ’s sake, if he 
have reason to ask for Christ’s sake, give it him, if thou 
canst. Now every man hath title to ask for Christ’s sake 
whose need is great, and himself unable to cure it, and if 
the man be a Christian. Whatsoever charity, Christ will 
reward all that is given for Christ’s sake, and therefore it 
may be asked in his name: but every man, that uses that 
sacred name for an endearment, hath not a title to it, nei¬ 
ther he, nor his need. 7. It is one of the wings of prayer, 
by which it flies to the throne of grace. 8. It crowns all 
the works of piety. 9. It causes thanksgiving to God on 
our behalf. 10. And the bowels of the poor bless us, and 
they pray for us. 11. And that portion of our estate, out 
of which a tenth, or a fifth, or a twentieth, or some offer¬ 
ing to God for religion and the poor goes forth, certainly 
returns with a great blessing upon all the rest. It is like 
the effusion of oil by the Sidonian woman; as long as she 
pours into empty vessels, it could never cease running: or 
like the widow’s barrel of meal; it consumed not, as 
long as she fed the prophet. 12. The sum of all is con¬ 
tained in the words of our blessed Saviour; “Give alms 
of such things as you have, and behold all things are clean 
unto you.” 13. To which may be added, that charity, or 
mercy, is the peculiar character of God’s elect, and a sign 
of predestination; which advantage we are taught by St. 
Paul: u Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and 
beloved, bowels of mercy, kindness, &c. Forbearing one 
another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a 
quarrel against any.”* The result of all which we may 
read in the words of St. Chrysostom: “ To know the art 
of alms, is greater than to be crowned with the diadem of 
kings. And yet to convert one soul is greater than to pour 
out ten thousand talents into the baskets of the poor. 

But, because giving alms is an act of the virtue of mer¬ 
cifulness, our endeavour must be, by proper arts, to mor¬ 
tify the parents of unmercifulness which are, 1. Envy ; 
2. Anger; 3. Covetousness: in which we may be helped 
by the following rules or instruments. 

* Coloss. iii. 12. 


220 


OF ENVY. 


Remedies against Unmercifillness and Uncharitableness. 

1. Against Envy , by way of Consideration. 

Against envy I shall use the same arguments I would 
use to persuade a man from the fever or the dropsy. X. 
Because it is a disease; it is so far from having pleasure in 
it, or a temptation to it, that it is full of pain, a great in¬ 
strument of vexation: it eats the flesh, and dries up the 
marrow, and makes hollow eyes, and lean cheeks, and a 
pale face. 2. It is nothing but a direct resolution never 
to enter into heaven by the way of noble pleasure, taken 
in the good of others. 3. It is most contrary to God. 
4. And a just contrary state to the felicities and actions of 
heaven, where every star increases the light of the other, 
and the multitude of guests at the Supper of the Lamb 
makes the eternal meal more festival. 5. It is perfectly 
the state of hell, and the passion of devils: for they do no¬ 
thing but despair in themselves, and envy other’s quiet or 
safety, and yet cannot rejoice either in their good or in 
their evil, although they endeavour to hinder that, and pro¬ 
cure this, with all the devices and arts of malice and of a 
great understanding. 6. Envy can serve no end in the 
world; it cannot please any thing, nor do any thing, nor 
hinder any thing, but the content and felicity of him that 
hath. 7. Envy can never pretend to justice, as hatred and 
uncharitableness sometimes may : for there may be causes 
of hatred ; and I may have wrong done me ; and then hatred 
hath some pretence, though no just argument. But no 
man is unjust or injurious, for being prosperous or wise. 
6. And therefore many men profess to hate another, but 
no man owns envy, as being an enmity and displeasure for 
no cause, but goodness or felicity : envious men being like 
cantharides and caterpillars, that delight most to devour 
ripe and most excellent fruits. 9. It is of all crimes, the 
basest; for malice and anger are appeased with benefits, 
but envy is exasperated, as envying to fortunate persons 
both their power and their will to do good; and never 
leaves murmuring, till the envied person be levelled ; and 
then only the vulture leaves to eat the liver. For if his 
neighbour be made miserable, the envious mart is apt to 
be troubled: like him, that is so long unbuilding the tur¬ 
rets, till all the roof is low or flat, or that the stones fall 


OF ANGER. 


221 


upon the lower buildings, and do a mischief that the man 
repents of. 

2. Remedies against Anger , by way of Exercise . 

The next enemy to mercifulness and the grace of alms 
is anger; against which there are proper instruments both 
in prudence and religion. 

1. Prayer is the great remedy against anger: for it must 
suppose it in some degree removed, before we pray; and 
then it is the more likely it will be finished, when the 
prayer is done. We must lay aside the act of anger, as a pre¬ 
paratory to prayer; and the curing the habit will be the ef¬ 
fect and blessing of prayer: so that, if a man, to cure his 
anger, resolves to address himself to God by prayer, it is 
first necessary, that, by his own observation ^and diligence, 
he lay the anger aside, before his prayer can be fit to be 
presented : and when we so pray, and so endeavour, we have 
all the blessings of prayer, which God hath promised to it, 
to be our security or success. 

2. If anger arises in thy breast, instantly seal up thy lips, 
and let it not go forth: for, like fire, when it wants vent, it 
will suppress itself. It is good, in a fever, to have a tender 
and a smooth tongue ; but it is better, that it be so in anger: 
for, if it be rough and distempered, there it is an ill sign, 
but here it is an ill cause. Angry passion is a fire, and 
angry words are like breath to fan them together; they are 
like steel and flint, sending out fire by mutual collision. 
Some men will discourse themselves into passion; and, if 
their neighbour be enkindled too, together they flame with 
rage and violence. 

3. Humility is the most excellent natural cure for anger, 
in the world: for he, that, by daily considering his own in¬ 
firmities and failings, makes the error of his neighbour or 
servant to be his own case, and remembers, that he daily 
needs God’s pardon and his brother’s charity, will not be 
apt to rage at the levities, or misfortunes, or indiscretions, 
of another; greater than which he considers, that he is 
very frequently and more inexcusably guilty of. 

4. Consider the example of the ever-blessed Jesus, who 
suffered all the contradictions of sinners, and received all 
affronts and reproaches of malicious, rash, and foolish per¬ 
sons, and yet, in all them, was as dispassionate and gentle, 
as the morning sun in autumn: and in this also he pro- 

x 2 


OF ANGER. 


222 

pounded himself imitable by us. For, if innocence itself 
did suffer so great injuries and disgraces, it is no great 
matter for us quietly to receive all the calamities of fortune, 
and indiscretion of servants, and mistakes of friends, and 
unkindnesses of kindred, and rudenesses of enemies; since 
we have deserved these and worse, even hell itself. 

5. If we be tempted to anger in the actions of govern¬ 
ment and discipline to our inferiors, (in which case, anger 
is permitted so far, as it is prudently instrumental to go¬ 
vernment, and only is a sin, when it is excessive and un¬ 
reasonable, and apt to disturb our own discourse, or to ex¬ 
press itself in imprudent words or violent actions,) let us 
propound to ourselves the example of God the Father; 
who, at the same time, and with the same tranquillity, de¬ 
creed heaven and hell, the joys of blessed angels and 
souls, and the torments of devils and accursed spirits: 
and, at the day of judgment, when all the world shall 
burn under his feet, God shall not be at all inflamed, or 
shaken in his essential seat and centre of tranquillity and 
joy. And if, at first, the cause seems reasonable, yet defer 
to execute thy anger, till thou mayest better judge. For, 
as Phocion told the Athenians, who, upon the first news of 
the death of Alexander, were ready to revolt, “ Stay a 
while ; for if the king be not dead, your haste will ruin you ; 
but, if he be dead, your stay cannot prejudice your affairs, 
for he will be dead to-morrow, as well as to-day so, if thy 
servant or inferior deserves punishment, staying till to¬ 
morrow will not make him innocent; but it may possibly 
preserve thee so, by preventing thy striking a guiltless per¬ 
son, or being furious for a trifle. 

6. Remove from thyself all provocations and incentives 
to anger; especially, 1. Games of chance and great 
wagers. Patroclus killed his friend, the son of Amphi- 
damus, in his rage and sudden fury, rising upon a cross 
game at tables. Such also are petty curiosities, and 
worldly business, and carefulness about it: but manage 
thyself with indifferency, or contempt of those external 
things, and do not spend a passion upon them; for it is 
more than they are worth. But they, that desire but few 
things, can be crossed but in a few. 2. In not heaping 
up, with an ambitious or curious prodigality, any very 
curious or choice utensils, seals, jewels, glasses, precious 
stones ; because those very many accidents, which happen 


OF ANGER. 


223 


in the spoiling or loss of these rarities, are, in event, an 
irresistible cause of violent anger. 3. Do not entertain nor 
suffer tale-bearers ; for they abuse our ears first, and then 
our credulity, and then steal our patience, and it may be 
for a lie; and, if it be true, the matter is not considerable : 
or if it be,yet it is pardonable. And we may always escape, 
with patience, at one of these outlets; either, 1. By not hear¬ 
ing slanders ; or, 2. By not believing them; or, 3. By not 
regarding the thing; or, 4. By forgiving the person. 4. To 
this purpose also it may serve well, if we choose (as much 
as we can) to live with peaceable persons, for that prevents 
the occasions of confusion ; and if we live with prudent per¬ 
sons, they will not easily occasion our disturbance. But, 
because these things are not in many men’s power, there¬ 
fore I propound this rather as a felicity than a remedy or a 
duty, and an art of prevention than of cure. 

7. Be not inquisitive into the affairs of other men, nor 
the faults of thy servants, nor the mistakes of thy friends: 
but what is offered to you, use according to the former 
rules; but do not thou go out to gather sticks to kindle a 
fire to burn thine own house. And add this; “ If my 
friend said, or did well in that, for which I am angry, I am 
in the fault, not he ; but if he did amiss, he is in the misery, 
not I: for either he was deceived, or he was malicious: 
and either of them both is all one with a miserable person : 
and that is an object of pity, not of anger. 

9. Use all reasonable discourses to excuse the faults of 
others; considering that there are many circumstances of 
time, of person, of accident, of inadvertency, of infrequency, 
of aptness to amend, of sorrow for doing it; and it is well 
that we take any good in exchange; for the evil is done or 
suffered. 

9. Upon the rising of anger, instantly enter into a deep 
consideration of the joys of heaven, or the pains of hell: 
for “ fear and joy are naturally apt to appease this violence.” 

10. In contentions be always passive,never active; upon 
the defensive, not the assaulting party; and then also give 
a gentle answer, receiving the furies and indiscretions of 
the other, like a stone into a bed of moss and soft compliance ; 
and you shall find it sit down quietly: whereas anger and 
violence make the contention loud and long, and injurious 
to both the parties. 

11. In the actions of religion, be careful to temper all 


OF ANGER. 


224 

thy instances with meekness, and the proper instruments 
of it: and, if thou beest apt to be angry, neither fast vio¬ 
lently, nor entertain the too-forward heats of zeal, but 
secure thy duty with constant and regular actions, and a 
good temper of body, with convenient refreshments and 
recreations. 

12. If angrer rises suddenly and violently, first restrain 
it with consideration; and then let it end in a hearty 
prayer for him that did the real or seeming injury. The 
former of the two stops its growth, and the latter quite 
kills it, and makes amends for its monstrous and involun 
tary birth. 

Remedies against Anger by way of Consideration. 

1. Consider,that anger is a professed enemy to counsel; 
it is a direct storm, in which no man can be heard to speak 
or call from without: for if you counsel gently, you are 
despised; if you urge it, and be vehement, you provoke it 
more. Be careful therefore to lay up beforehand a great 
stock of reason and prudent consideration, that, like a be¬ 
sieged town, you may be provided for, and be defensible 
from within, since you are not likely to be relieved from 
without. Anger is not to be suppressed but by something, 
that is as inward as itself, and more habitual. To which 
purpose add, that, 2. Of all passions, it endeavours most 
to make reason useless. 3. That it is a universal poison, 
of an infinite object; for no man was ever so amorous, as 
to love a toad; none so envious, as to repine at the con¬ 
dition of the miserable ; no man so timorous, as to fear a 
dead bee ; but anger is troubled at every thing, and every 
man, and every accident; and therefore, unless it be sup¬ 
pressed, it will make a man’s condition restless. 4. If it 
proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a 
small cause, it is peevishness: and so is, always, either 
terrible or ridiculous. 5. It makes a man’s body mon¬ 
strous, deformed, and contemptible ; the voice horrid ; the 
eyes cruel; the face pale or fiery : the gait fierce; the 
speech clamorous and loud. 6. It is neither manly nor 
ingenuous. 7. It proceeds from softness of spirit and 
pusillanimity : which makes, that women are more angry 
than men, sick persons more than healthful, old men more 
than young, unprosperous and calamitous people than the 
jlessed and fortunate. 8. It is a passion fitter for flies 


OF ANGER 


225 


and insects, than for persons, professing nobleness and 
bounty. 9. It is troublesome not only to those that suffer 
it, but to them that behold it; there being no greater in¬ 
civility of entertainment, than for the cook’s fault or the 
negligence of the servants, to be cruel, or outrageous, or 
unpleasant in the presence of the guests. 10. It makes mar¬ 
riage to be a necessary and unavoidable trouble ; friend 
ships, and societies, and familiarities, to be intolerable. 
11. It multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes the 
levities of wine to run into madness. 12. It makes inno¬ 
cent jesting to be the beginning of tragedies. 13. It turns 
friendship into hatred ; it makes a man lose himself, and 
his reason, and his argument, in disputation. It turns the 
desires of knowledge into an itch of wrangling. It adds 
insolency to power. It turns justice into cruelty, and judg¬ 
ment into oppression. It changes discipline into tedious¬ 
ness and hatred of liberal institution. It makes a prospe¬ 
rous man to be envied, and the unfortunate to be unpitied. 
It is a confluence of all the irregular passions: there is in 
it envy and sorrow, fear and scorn, pride and prejudice, rash¬ 
ness and inconsideration, rejoicing in evil and a desire to 
inflict it, self-love, impatience, and curiosity. And lastly, 
though it be very troublesome to others, yet it is most trou¬ 
blesome to him, that hath it. 

In the use of these arguments and the former exercises, 
be diligent to observe, lest, in your desires to suppress an¬ 
ger, you be passionate and angry at yourself for being an¬ 
gry ; like physicians, who give a bitter potion, when they 
intend to eject the bitterness of choler; for this will pro¬ 
voke the person, and increase the passion. But placidly 
and quietly set upon the mortification of it; and attempt 
it first for a day, resolving that day not at all to be angry, 
and to be watchful and observant; for a day is no great 
trouble: but then, after one day’s watchfulness, it will be 
as easy to watch two days, as at first it was to watch one 
day ; and so you may increase, till it becomes easy and ha¬ 
bitual. 

Only observe, that such an anger alone is criminal, which 
is against charity to myself or my neighbour; but angei 
against sin is a holy zeal, and an effect of love to God and 
my brother, for whose interest I am passionate, like a con¬ 
cerned person: and, if I take care, that my anger makes 
no reflection of scorn or cruelty upon the offender, or of 


226 


OF COVETOUSNESS. 


pride and violence, or transportation to myself, anger oe- 
comes charity and duty. And when one commended Cha- 
rilaus, the king of Sparta, for a g6ntle, a good, and a meek 
prince, his colleague said well, “ How can he be good, who 
is not an enemy even to vicious persons ?” 

3. Remedies against Covetousness , the third Enemy 

of Mercy. 

Covetousness is also an enemy to alms, though not to all 
the effects of mercifulness: but this is to be cured by the 
proper motives to charity beforementioned, and by the pro¬ 
per rules of justice : which being secured, the arts of get¬ 
ting money are not easily made criminal. To which also 
we may add, 

1. Covetousness makes a man miserable ; because riches 
are not means to make a man happy : and unless felicity 
were to be bought with money, he is a vain person, who 
admires heaps of gold and rich possessions. For what 
Hippomachus said to some persons, who commended a tall 
man as fit to be a champion in the Olympic games, “ It is 
true (said he) if the crown hang so high, that the longest 
arm could reach itthe same we may say concerning 
riches ; they were excellent things, if the richest man were 
certainly the wisest and the best: but as they are, they are 
nothing to be wondered at, because they contribute no¬ 
thing towards felicity : which appears, because some men 
choose to be miserable, that they may be rich, rather than 
be happy with the expense of money, and doing noble 
things. 

2. Riches are useless and unprofitable; for beyond our 
needs and conveniences, nature knows no use of riches: 
and they say, that the princes of Italy, when they sup 
alone, eat out of a single dish, and drink in a plain glass, 
and the wife eats without purple; for nothing is more fru¬ 
gal than the back and belly, if they be used as they should; 
but when they would entertain the eyes of strangers, when 
they are vain, and would make a noise, then riches come 
forth to set £prth the spectacle, and furnish out the comedy 
of wealth of vanity. No man can, with all the wealth in 
the world, buy so much skill, as to be a good lutenist ; he 
must go the same way that poor people do, he must learn 
and take pains : much less can he buy constancy, or chas¬ 
tity, or courage; nay, not so much as the contempt of 


OF COVETOUSNESS. 


22? 

riches: and, by possessing more than we need, we cannot 
obtain so much power over our souls, as not to require 
more. And certainly riches must deliver me from no evil, 
if the possession of them cannot take away the longing for 
them. If any man be thirsty, drink cools him ; if he be 
hungry, eating meat satisfies him : and when a man is 
cold, and calls for a warm cloak, he is pleased if you give 
it him; but you trouble him, if you load him with six or 
eight cloaks. Nature rests, and sits still, when she hath 
her portion ; but that which exceeds it, is a trouble and a 
burden: and, therefore, in true philosophy, no man is rich, 
but he that is poor, according to the common account: for 
when God hath satisfied those needs which he made, that 
is, all that is natural, whatsoever is beyond it is thirst 
and a disease ; and, unless i1*be sent back again in charity 
or religion, can serve no end but vice or vanity : it can in¬ 
crease the appetite to represent the man poorer, and full of 
a new and artificial, unnatural need; but it never satisfies 
the needs it makes, or makes the man richer. No wealth 
can satisfy the covetous desire of wealth. 

3. Riches are troublesome ; but the satisfaction of those 
appetites, which God and nature hath made, are cheap 
and easy ; for who ever paid use-money for bread, and 
onions and water to keep him alive 1 but when we covet 
after houses of the frame and design of Italy, or long for 
jewels, or for our next neighbour’s field, or horses from 
Barbary, or the richest perfumes of Arabia, or Galatian 
mules, or fat eunuchs for our slaves from Tunis, or rich 
coaches from Naples, then we can never be satisfied, till 
we have the best thing that is fancied, and all that can be 
had, and all that can be desired, and that we can lust no 
more: but, before we come to the one half of our first 
wild desires, we are the bondmen of usurers and of our 
worse tyrant appetites, and the tortures of envy and impa¬ 
tience. But I consider, that those who drink on still, when 
their thirst is quenched, or eat after they have well dined, 
are forced to vomit not only their superfluity, but even that 
which at first was necessary: so those that covet more than 
they can temperately use, are oftentimes forced to part 
even with that patrimony which would have supported their 
persons in freedom and honour, and have satisfied all their 
reasonable desire. 

4. Contentedness is therefore health, because covetous- 


228 


OF COVETOUSNESS. 


ness is a direct sickness: and it was well said of Aristip¬ 
pus, (as Plutarch reports him,) if any man, after much eat¬ 
ing and drinking, be still unsatisfied, he hath no need of 
more meat or more drink, but of a physician ; he more needs 
to be purged than to be filled : and therefore, since covet¬ 
ousness cannot be satisfied, it must be cured by emptiness 
and evacuation. The man is without remedy, unless he 
be reduced to the scantling of nature and the measures of 
his personal necessity. Give to a poor man a house, and 
a few cows, pay his little debt, and set him on work, and 
he is provided for, and quiet: but when a man enlarges 
beyond a fair possession, and desires another lordship, you 
spite him if you let him have it; for, by that, he is one de¬ 
gree the further off from rest in his desires and satisfac¬ 
tion ; and now he sees himsglf in a bigger capacity to a 
larger fortune; and he shall never find his period, till you 
begin to take away something of what he hath ; for then he 
will begin to be glad to keep that which is left: but reduce 
him to natures measures, and there he shall be sure to find 
rest: for there no man can desire beyond his belly-full; 
and, when he wants that, any one friend or charitable man 
can cure his poverty ; but all the world cannot satisfy his 
covetousness. 

5. Covetousness is the most fantastical and contradic¬ 
tory disease in the whole world ; it must therefore be incu¬ 
rable, because it strives against its own cure. No man, 
therefore, abstains from meat because he is hungry, nor 
from wine because he loves it and needs it: but the covet¬ 
ous man does so, for he desires it passionately, because he 
says he needs it, and when he hath it he will need it still, 
because he dares not use it. He gets clothes, because he 
cannot be without them; but when he hath them, then he 
can: as if he needed corn for his granary, and clothes for 
his wardrobe, more than for his back and belly. For covet¬ 
ousness pretends to heap much together for fear of want; 
and yet, after all his pains and purchase, he suffers that 
really, which at first he feared vainly; and, by not using 
what he gets, he makes that suffering to be actual, present, 
and necessary, which, in his lowest condition, was but 
future, contingent and possible. It stirs up the desire, 
and takes aw'ay the pleasure of being satisfied. It increases 
the appetite, and will not content it; it swells the principal 
to no purpose, and lessens the use to all purposes; dis 


OF COVETOUSNESS. 


229 

turbing the order of nature, and the designs of God ; mak¬ 
ing money not to be the instrument of exchange or charity, 
nor corn to feed himself or the poor, nor wool to clothe 
himself or his brother, nor wine to refresh the sadness of 
the afflicted, nor his oil to make his own countenance 
cheerful; but all these to look upon, and to tell over, and 
to take accounts by, and make himself considerable, and 
wondered at by fools: that while he lives, he maybe called 
rich, and when he dies, may be accounted miserable; and, 
like the dish-makers of China, may leave a greater heap of 
dirt for his nephews, while he himself hath a new lot fallen 
to him in the portion of Dives. But thus the ass carried 
wood and sweet herbs to the baths, but was never washed 
or perfumed himself: he heaped up sweets for others, while 
himself was filthy with smoke and ashes. And yet it is 
considerable; if the man can be content to feed hardly, 
and labour extremely, and watch carefully, and suffer af¬ 
fronts and disgrace, that he may get more money, than he 
uses in his temperance and just needs, with how much ease 
might this man be happy? and with how great uneasiness 
and trouble does he make himself miserable? For he takes 
pains to get content, and when he might have it he lets it 
go. He might better be content with a virtuous and quiet 
poverty, than with an artificial, troublesome, and vicious. 
The same diet and a less labour would, at first, make him 
happy, and for ever after rewardable. 

6. The sum of all is that, which the apostle says, “ Co¬ 
vetousness is idolatry ;”that is, it is an admiring money foi 
itself, not for its use ; it relies upon money, and loves it 
more than it loves God and religion : and it is “ the root of 
all evilit teaches men to be cruel and crafty, industri¬ 
ous in evil, full of care and malice ; it devours young heirs, 
and grinds the face of the poor, and undoes those who spe¬ 
cially belong to God’s protection, helpless, craftless, and 
innocent people ; it inquires into our parents’ age, and 
longs lor the death of our friends; it makes friendship an 
art of rapine, and changes a partner into a vulture, and 
a companion into a thief; and after all this, it is for no 
good to itself; for it dares not spend those heaps of trea¬ 
sure which it snatched: and men hate serpents and basi¬ 
lisks worse than lions and bears ; for these kill, because 
they need the prey, but they sting to death and eat not. 
And if they pietend all this care, and heap for their heirs, 


OF COVETOUSNESS. 


230 

(like the mice of Africa, hiding the golden ore in theii 
bowels, and refusing to give back the indigested gold, till 
their guts be out,) they may remember, that what was un* 
necessary for themselves, is as unnecessary for their sons: 
and why cannot they be without it, as well as their fathers, 
who did not use it ? And it often happens, that to the sons 
it becomes an instrument to serve some lust or other; that, 
as the gold was useless to their fathers, so may the sons 
be to the public, fools or prodigals, loads to their country, 
and the curse and punishment of their father’s avarice ; 
and yet all that wealth is short of one blessing; but it is 
a load coming with a curse, and descending from the fa¬ 
mily of a long derived sin. However the father trans¬ 
mits it to the son, and it may be the son to one or more : 
till a tyrant or an oppressor, or a war, or a change of 
government, or the usurer, or folly, or an expensive vice, 
makes holes in the bottom of the bag, and the wealth runs 
out like water, and flies away, like a bird from the hand of 
a child. 

7. Add to these the consideration of the advantages of 
poverty ; that it is a state freer from temptation, secure in 
dangers, but of one trouble, safe under the Divine Provi¬ 
dence, cared for in heaven by a daily ministration, and for 
whose support God makes' every day a new decree; a 
state, of which Christ was pleased to make open profes¬ 
sion, and manv wise men daily make vows : that a rich 
man is but like a pool, to whom the poor run, and first 
trouble it, and then draw it dry: that he enjoys no more 
of it, than according to the few and limited needs of a 
man; he cannot eat like -a wolf or an elephant: that 
variety of dainty fare ministers but to sin and sicknesses; 
that the poor man feasts oftener than the rich, because 
every little enlargement is a feast to the poor, but he that 
feasts every day feasts no day, there being nothing left, to 
which he may, beyond his ordinary, extend his appetite ; 
that the rich man sleeps not so soundly as the poor la¬ 
bourer; that his fears are more, and his needs are greater 
(for who is poorer, he that needs 51. or he that needs 
5000Z. ?) the poor man hath enough to fill his belly, and 
the rich hath not enough to fill his eye ; that the poor man’s 
wants are easy to be relieved by a common charity, but 
the needs of rich men cannot be supplied but by princes, 
and they are left to the temptation of great vices to make 


OF REPENTANCE. 


231 

reparation of their needs; and the ambitious labouis of 
men to get great estates is but like the selling of a foun 
tain to buy a fever, a parting with content to buy necessity 
a purchase of an unhandsome condition at the price of 
infelicity; that princes, and they that enjoy most of the 
world, have most of it but in title, and supreme rights, and 
reserve privileges, pepper-corns, homages, trifling ser¬ 
vices and acknowledgments, the real use descending to 
others to more substantial purposes. These considerations 
may be useful to the curing of covetousness, that the 
grace of mercifulness enlarging the heart of a man, his 
hand may not be contracted, but reached out to the poor in 
alms. 

SECTION IX. 

Of Repentance. 

Repentance, of all things in the world, makes the 
greatest change: it changes things in heaven and earth; 
for it changes the whole man from sin to grace, from vi¬ 
cious habits to holy customs, from unchaste bodies to an¬ 
gelical souls, from swine to philosophers, from drunkenness 
to sober counsels : and God himself, “ with whom is no 
variableness or shadow of change,” is pleased, by descend¬ 
ing to our weak understandings, to say, that he changes 
also upon man’s repentance, that he alters his decrees, re¬ 
vokes his sentence, cancels the bills of accusation, throws 
the records of shame and sorrow from the court of heaven, 
and lifts up the sinner from the grave to life, from his 
prigon to a throne, from hell and the guilt of eternal tor¬ 
ture, to heaven and to a title to never-ceasing felicities. 
If we be bound on earth, we shall be bound in heaven: if 
we be absolved here, we shall be loosed there : if we re- 
* pent, God will repent, and not send the evil upon us, which • 
we had deserved. 

But repentance is a conjugation and society of many 
duties; and it contains in it all the parts of a holy life, 
from the time of our return to the day of our death inclu¬ 
sively ; and it hath in it some things specially relating to 
the sins of our former days, which are now to be abolished 
by special arts, and have obliged us to special labours, 
and brought in many new necessities, and put us into a 
very great deal of danger. And, because it is a duty con¬ 
sisting of so many parts and so much employment, it also 


232 


OF REPENTANCE. 


requires much time, and leaves a man in the same degreo 
of hope of pardon, as in his restitution to the state of 
righteousness and holy living for which we covenanted in 
baptism. For we must know, that there is but one re¬ 
pentance in a man’s whole life, if repentance be taken in 
the proper and strict evangelical covenant sense, and not 
after the ordinary understanding of the world; that is, we 
are but once to change our whole state of life, from the 
power of the devil and his entire possession, from the state 
of sin and death, from the body of corruption, to the life 
of grace, to the possession of Jesus, to the kingdom of 
the Gospel; and this is done in the baptism of water, or 
in the baptism of the Spirit, when the first rite comes to 
be verified by God’s grace coming upon us, and by our 
obedience to the heavenly calling, we working together 
with God. After this change, if ever we fall into the 
contrary state, and be wholly estranged from God and 
religion, and profess ourselves servants of unrighteous¬ 
ness, God hath made no more covenant of restitution to 
us ; there is no place left for any more repentance, or en¬ 
tire change of condition, or new birth : a man can be re¬ 
generated but once ; and such are voluntary, malicious 
apostates, witches, obstinate impenitent persons, and the 
like. But if we be overtaken by infirmity, or enter into 
the marches or borders of this estate, and commit a 
grievous sin, or ten, or twenty, so we be not in the entire 
possession of the devil, we are, for the present, in a dam¬ 
nable condition, if we die; but if we live, we are in a 
recoverable condition; for so we may repent often. We 
repent or rise from death but once, but from sickness 
many times; and, by the grace of God, we shall be par¬ 
doned, if so we repent. But our hopes of pardon are 
just as is the repentance : which, if it be timely, hearty, 
industrious, and effective, Gcd accepts; not by weighing 
grains or scruples, but by estimating the great proportions 
of our life. A hearty endeavour, and an effectual general 
change, shall get the pardon; the unavoidable infirmities, 
and past evils, and present imperfections, and short inter¬ 
ruptions, against which we watch, and pray, and strive, 
being put upon the accounts of the cross, and paid for by 
the holy Jesus. This is the state and condition of re¬ 
pentance : its parts and actions must be valued, according 
to the following rules. 


OF REPENTANCE. 


283 


Acts and Parts of Repentance. 

1. He that repents truly, is greatly sorrowful for his 
past sins: not with a superficial sigh or tear, but a pun¬ 
gent afflictive sorrow; such a sorrow as hates the sin so 
much, that the man would choose to die rather than act it 
any more. This sorrow is called in Scripture “ a weeping 
sorely ; a weeping with bitterness of heart; a weeping day 
and night; a sorrow of heart; a breaking of the spirit; 
mourning like a dove, and chattering like a swallow 
and we may read the degree and manner of it by the 
lamentations and sad accents of the prophet Jeremy, when 
he wept for the sins of the nation : by the heart-breaking of 
David, when he mourned for his murder and adultery : and 
the bitter weeping of St. Peter, after the shameful denying 
of his master. The expression of his sorrow differs according 
to the temper of the body, the sex, the age, and circum¬ 
stance of action, and the motive of sorrow, and by many ac¬ 
cidental tendernesses, or masculine hardnesses; and the 
repentance is not to be estimated by the tears, but by the 
grief; and the grief is to be valued, not by the sensitive 
trouble, but by the cordial hatred of the sin, and ready ac¬ 
tual dereliction of it, and a resolution, and real resisting 
its consequent temptations. Some people can shed tears 
for nothing, some for any thing; but the proper and true 
effects of a godly sorrow are, fear of the Divine judgments, 
apprehension of God’s displeasure, watchings and strivings 
against sin, patiently enduring the cross of sorrow (which 
God sends as their punishment,) in accusation of ourselves, 
in perpetually begging pardon, in mean and base opinions 
of ourselves, and in all the natural productions from these, 
according to our temper and constitution. For if we be 
apt to weep in other accidents, it is ill, if we weep not also 
in the sorrows of repentance : not that weeping is of itself 
a duty, but that the sorrow, if it be as great, will be still 
expressed in as great a manner. 

2. Our sorrow for sins must retain the proportion of our 
sins ; though not the equality : we have no particular mea¬ 
sures of sins; we know not, which is greater of sacrilege 
or superstition, idolatry or covetousness, rebellion or witch¬ 
craft : and therefore God ties us not to nice measures of 

* Jer. xiii. 17. Joel ii. 13. Ezek. xxvii. 31. James iv. 9. 

Y 2 


OF REPENTANCE. 


234 

sorrow, but only, that we keep the general rules of propor¬ 
tion ; that is, that a great sin have a great grief, a smaller 
crime being to be washed off with a lesser shower. 

3. Our sorrow for sins is then best accounted of for its 
degree when it, together with all the penal and afflictive 
duties of repentance, shall have equalled or exceeded the 
pleasure we had in commission of the sin. 

4. True repentance is a punishing duty, and acts its sor¬ 
row ; and judges and condemns the sin by voluntary sub¬ 
mitting to such sadnesses as God sends on us, or (to pre¬ 
vent the judgment of God) by judging ourselves, and pun¬ 
ishing our bodies and our spirits by such instruments of 
piety, as are troublesome to the body : such as are fasting, 
watching, long prayers, troublesome postured in our prayers, 
expensive alms, and all outward acts of humiliation. For 
he that must judge himself, must condemn himself, if he 
be guilty; and, if he be condemned, he must be punished; 
and, if he be so judged, it will help to prevent the judg¬ 
ment of the Lord, St. Paul instructing us in this particular.* 
But I before intimated, that the punishing actions of repent¬ 
ance are only actions of sorrow, and therefore are to make 
up the proportions of it. For our grief may be so full of 
trouble, as to outweigh all the burdens of fasts and bodily 
afflictions, and then the other are the less necessary; and, 
when they are used, the benefit of them is to obtain of God 
a remission or a lessening of such temporal judgments, 
which God hath decreed against the sins, as it was in the 
case of Ahab : but the sinner is not, by any thing of this 
reconciled to the eternal favour of God; for as yet, this is 
but the introduction to repentance. 

5. Every true penitent is obliged to confess his sins, and 
to humble himself before God for ever. Confession of 
sins hath a special promise. “ If we confess our sins, he 
is faithful and just to forgive us our sins :”f meaning, that 
God hath bound himself to forgive us, if we duly confess 
our sins, and do all that for which confession was ap¬ 
pointed ; that is, be ashamed of them, and own them no 
more. For confession of our sins to God can signify no¬ 
thing of itself, in its direct nature; he sees us, when we 
act them, and keeps a record of them; and we forget 
them, unless he reminds us of them by his grace. So 
“ that to confess them to God does not punish us, or make 

* 1 Cor. xi. 31. t 1 John i. 9. 


OF REPENTANCE. 


235 


us ashamed; but confession to him, if it proceeds from 
shame and sorrow, and is an act of humility and self-con¬ 
demnation,” and is a laying open our wounds for cure, 
then it is a duty God delights in. In all which circum¬ 
stances, because we may very much be helped, if we take 
tn the assistance of a spiritual guide ; therefore the church 
of God, in all ages, hath commended, and, in most ages, 
enjoined, that we confess our sins, and discover the state 
and condition of our souls, to such a person, whom we 
or our superiors judge fit to help us in such needs. For 
so “ if we confess our sins one to another,” as St. James ad¬ 
vises, we shall obtain the prayers of the holy man, whom 
God and the church have appointed solemnly to pray for 
us : and when he knows our needs, he can best minister 
comfort or reproof, oil or caustics; he can more oppor¬ 
tunely recommend your particular state to God; he can 
determine your cases of conscience, and judge better for 
you, than you do for yourself; and the shame of opening 
such ulcers may restrain your forwardness to contract 
them: and all these circumstances of advantage will do 
very much towards the forgiveness. And this course was 
taken by the new converts in the days of the apostles ; 
“ For many that believed, came and confessed and showed 
their deeds.”* And it were well, if this duty were practised 
prudently and innocently in order to public discipline, or 
private comfort and instruction: but that it be done to 
God is a duty, not directly for itself, but for its adjuncts, 
and the duties that go with it, or before it, or after it: 
which duties, because they are all to be helped and guided 
by our pastors and curates of souls, he is careful of his 
eternal interest, that will not lose the advantage of using 
a private guide and judge. “ He that hideth his sins shall 
not prosper ;” (Non dirigetur, saith the vulgar Latin, “ he 
shall want a guide,”) “ but who confesseth and forsaketh 
them, shall have mercy.”f And to this purpose Climacus 
reports, that divers holy persons in that age did use to carry 
table-books with them, and in them described an account 
of all their determinate thoughts, purposes, words, and ac¬ 
tions, m which they had suffered infirmity; that, by com¬ 
municating the estate of their souls, they might be instructed 
and glided, and corrected or encouraged. 

6. True repentance must reduce to act all its holy pur- 
* Acts xix. 18. t Prov. xxviii. 13. 


236 


OF PRAYER. 


poses, and enter into and run through the state of holy 
living,* which is contrary to that state of darkness, in which 
in times past we walked. For to resolve to do it, and yet 
not to do it, is to break our resolution and our faith, to 
mock God, to falsify and evacuate all the preceding acts 
of repentance, and to make our pardon hopeless, and our 
hope fruitless. He that resolves to live well, when a dan¬ 
ger is upon him, or a violent fear, or when the appetites of 
lust are newly satisfied, or newly served, and yet when the 
temptation comes again, sins again, and then is sorrowful, 
and resolves once more against it, and yet falls when the 
temptation returns, is a vain man, but no true penitent, 
nor in the state of grace ; and if he chance to die in one 
of these good moods, is very far from salvation; for if it be 
necessary that we resolve to live well, it is necessary we 
should do so. For resolution is an imperfect act, a term 
of relation, and signifies nothing but in order to the actions ; 
it is as a faculty is to the act, as spring to the harvest, as 
eggs are to birds, as a relative to its correspondent, nothing 
without it. No man therefore can be in the state of grace 
and actual favour by resolutions and holy purposes, these 
are but the gate and portal towards pardon ; a holy life is 
the only perfection of repentance, and the firm ground 
upon which we can cast the anchor of hope in the mercies 
of God, through Jesus Christ. 

7. No man is to reckon his pardon immediately upon his 
returns from sin to the beginnings of good life, but is to 
begin his hopes and degrees of confidence according as 
sin dies in him, and grace lives; as the habits of sin lessen, 
and righteousness grows ; according as sin returns, but sel¬ 
dom, in smaller instances and without choice, and by sur¬ 
prise without deliberation, and is highly disrelished, and 
presently dashed against the rock Christ Jesus by a holy 
sorrow and renewed care and more strict watchfulness. 
For a holy life being the condition of the covenant on our 
part, as we return to God so God returns to us, and our 
state returns to the probabilities of pardon. 

8. Every man is to work out his salvation with fear and 
trembling; and after the commission of sins his fears must 
multiply : because every new sin and every great declining 

* Rom. vi. 3, 4, 7. viii. 10. xiii. 13, 14. xi. 22, 27. Gal. v 6/2 

15. 1 Cor. vii. 19. 2 Cor. xiii. 5. Colos. i. 21—23. Heb. xii. 1. 14. 16.x 

16. 22. 1 Pet. i. 15. 2 Pet. i. 4. 9 10. iii. 11. 1 John i. 6. zii. 8, 9. v. 16. 


OK REPENTANCE. 


237 

from the ways of God is still a degree of new danger, and 
hath increased God’s anger and hath made him more un¬ 
easy to grant pardon: and when he does grant it, it is 
upon harder terms both for doing and suffering; that is, 
we must do more for pardon, and, it may be, suffer much 
more. For we must know, that God pardons our sins by 
parts; as our duty increases, and our care is more pru¬ 
dent and active, so God’s anger decreases : and yet, it may 
be, the last sin you committed made God unalterably re¬ 
solve to send upon you some sad judgment. Of the par- 
tieulars in all cases we are uncertain ; arid therefore we 
have reason always to mourn for our sins, that have so 
provoked God, and made our condition so full of danger, 
that, it may be, no prayers or tears or duty can alter his 
sentence concerning some sad judgment upon us. Thus 
God irrevocably decreed to punish the Israelites for idola¬ 
try, although Moses prayed for them, and God forgave 
them in some degree; that is, so that he would not cut 
them off from being a people: yet he would not forgive 
them so, but he would visit that their sin upon them: and 
he did so. 

9. A true penitent must, all the days of his life, pray for 
pardon, and never think the work completed, till he dies: 
not by any act of his own, by no act of the church, by 
no forgiveness by the party injured, by no restitution. 
These are all instruments of great use and efficacy, and 
the means by which it is to be done at length; but still 
the sin lies at the door, ready to return upon us in judg¬ 
ment and damnation, if we return to it in choice or action. 
And whether God hath forgiven us or no, we know not, 
and how far we know not; and all that we have done, is 
not of sufficient worth to obtain pardon : therefore still pray, 
and still be sorrowful for ever having done it, and for eve^ 
watch against it; and then those beginnings of pardon, 
which are working all the way, will at last be perfected in 
the day of the Lord. 

10. Defer not at all to repent; much less, mayest thou 
put it off to thy death-bed. It is not an easy thing to root 
out the habits of sin, which a man’s whole life hath ga¬ 
thered and confirmed. We find work enough to mortify one 
beloved lust, in our very best advantage of strength and 
time, before it is so deeply rooted, as it must needs be 
supposed to be at the end of a wicked life : and therefore it 


238 


OF REPENTANCE. 


will prove impossible, when the work is so great and the 
strength so little, when sin is so strong and grace so weak 
for they always keep the same proportion of increase and de¬ 
crease, and as sin grows, grace decays : so that the more 
need we have of grace, the less at that time we shall have; 
because the greatness of our sins, which makes the need 
hath lessened the grace of God, which should help us, in¬ 
to nothing. To which add this consideration; that on a 
man’s death-bed the day of repentance is past: for repen¬ 
tance being the renewing of a holy life, a living the life of 
grace, it is a contradiction to say that a man can live a 
holy life upon his death-bed : especially if we consider, that 
for a sinner to live a holy life must first suppose him to 
have overcome all his evil habits, and then to have made 
a purchase of the contrary graces, by the labours of great 
prudence, watchfulness, self-denial and severity. “ Nothing 
that is excellent, can be wrought suddenly.” 

11. After the beginnings of thy recovery, be infinitely 
fearful of a relapse ; and therefore, upon the stock of thy 
sad experience, observe where thy failings were, and by 
especial arts fortify that faculty and arm against that temp¬ 
tation. For if all those arguments, which God uses to 
us to preserve our innocence, and thy late danger, and thy 
fears, and the goodness of God making thee once to es¬ 
cape, and the shame of thy fall, and the sense of thy own 
weaknesses, will not make thee watchful against a fall, es¬ 
pecially knowing how much it costs a man to be restored, 
it will be infinitely more dangerous, if ever thou fallest 
again; not only for fear God should no more accept thee to 
pardon, but even thy own hopes will be made mor? despe¬ 
rate, and thy impatience greater, and thy shame turn to im¬ 
pudence, and thy own will be more estranged, violent, and 
refractory, and thy latter end will be worse than thy begin¬ 
ning. To which add this consideration : that thy sin, which 
was formerly in a good way of being pardoned, will not only 
return upon thee with all its own loads, but with the baseness 
of unthankfulness, and thou wilt be set as far back from 
heaven as ever; and all thy former labours, and fears, and 
watchings, and agonies, will be reckoned for nothing, but 
as arguments to upbraid thy folly, who, when thou hadst 
set one foot in heaven, didst pull that back, and carry both 
to hell. 


OF REPENTANCE. 


239 • 


Motives to Repentance. 

I shall use no other arguments to move a sinner to repent¬ 
ance, but to tell him, unless he does, he shall certainly 
perish; and if he does repent timely and entirely; that is, 
live a holy life, he shall be forgiven and be saved. But 
yet I desire, that this consideration be enlarged with some 
great circumstances ; and let us remember, 

1. That to admit mankind to repentance and pardon, 
was a favour greater than ever God gave to the angels and 
devils; for thay were never admitted to the condition of 
second thoughts: Christ never groaned one groan for 
them : he never suffered one stripe nor one affront, nor 
shed one drop of blood, to restore them to hopes of blessed¬ 
ness after their first failings. But this he did for us: he paid 
the score of our sins, only that we might be admitted to re¬ 
pent, and that this repentance might be effectual to the 
great purposes of felicity and salvation. 

2. Consider, that as it cost Christ many millions of 
prayers, and groans, and sighs, so he is now at this instant, 
and hath been for these sixteen hundred years, night and 
day incessantly, praying for grace to us, that we may repent; 
and for pardon, when we do; and for degrees of pardon 
beyond the capacities of our infirmities, and the merit of 
our sorrows and amendment; and this prayer he will con¬ 
tinue till his second coming: “ for he ever liveth to make 
intercession for us.” # And that we may know what it is, in 
behalf of which he intercedes, St. Paul tells us his design; 
“ We are ambassadors for Christ, as though he did beseech 
you by us, we pray you in Christ’s stead to be reconciled 
to God.”f And what Christ prays us to do, he prays to 
God that we may do ; that which he desires of us as his 
servants, he desires of God, who is the fountain of the grace 
and powers unto us, and without whose assistance we can 
do nothing. 

3. That ever we should repent, was so costly a purchase, 
and so great a concernment, and so high a favour, and the 
event is esteemed by God himself so great an excellency, 
that our blessed Saviour tells us, “ there shall be joy in 
heaven over one sinner that repentethJ meaning, that 
when Christ shall be glorified, and at the right hand of his 
Father make intercession for us, praying for our repentance, 

* Heb. vii. 15. t 2 Cor. v. 20. t Luke xv. 7. 


OF REPENTANCE. 


240 

he conversion and repentance of every sinner is part ot 
Christ’s glorification, it is the answering of his prayers, it 
is a portion of his reward, in which he does essentially 
glory by the joys of his glorified humanity. This is the 
joy of our Lord himself directly, not of the angels, save 
only by reflection ; the joy (said our blessed Saviour) shall 
be in the presence of the angels; they shall see the glory 
of the Lord, the answering of his prayers, the satisfaction 
)f his desires, and the reward of his sufferings in the re¬ 
pentance and consequent pardon of a sinner. For there¬ 
fore he once suffered, and for that reason «he rejoices for 
ever. And therefore, when a penitent sinner comes to re 
ceive the effect and full consummation of his pardon, it is 
called ‘^an entering into the joy of our Lord;” that is, a 
partaking of that joy, which Christ received at our conversion, 
and enjoyed ever since. 

4. Add to this, that the rewards of heaven are so great 
and glorious, and Christ’s burden is so light, his yoke is so 
easy, that it is a shameless impudence to expect so great 
glories at a less rate than so little a service, at a lower rate 
than a holy life. It cost the heart-blood of the Son of God 
to obtain heaven for us upon that condition, and who shall 
die again to get heaven for us upon easier terms ? What 
would you do, if God should command you to kill your 
eldest son, or to work in the mines for a thousand years to¬ 
gether, or to fast all thy lifetime with bread and water 1 
were not heaven a very great bargain even after all this ? 
And when God requires nothing of us but to live soberly, 
justly, and godly, (which things of themselves are to a man 
a very great felicity, and necessary to our present weli- 
being,) shall we think this to be an intolerable burden, and 
that heaven is too little a purchase at that price; and tha. 
God, in mere justice, will take a death-bed sigh or groan, 
and a few unprofitable tears and promises in exchange for 
all our duty. 

If these motives joined together with our own interest* 
even as much as felicity, and the sight of God, and the 
avoiding the intolerable pains of hell, and many interme- 
dial judgments come to, will not move us to leave, 1. the 
filthiness, and, 2. the trouble, and, 3. the uneasiness, and, 
4. the unreasonableness of sin, and turn to God, there is 
no more to be said ; we must perish in our folly. 


PREPARATION TO THE HOLY SACRAMENT. 


241 


SECTION X. 

Of Preparation to, and the Manner how to Receive the Holy 
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 

The celebration of the holy sacrament is the great mys¬ 
teriousness of the Christian religion, and succeeds to the 
most solemn rite of natural and Judaical religion, the law 
of sacrificing. For God spared mankind, and took the sa¬ 
crifice of beasts, together with our solemn prayers, for an 
instrument of expiation. But these could not purify the 
soul from sin, but were typical of the sacrifice of something 
that could. But nothing could do this, but either the offer¬ 
ing of all that sinned, that every man should be the anathema 
or devoted thing ; or else by some one of the same capacity, 
who by some superadded excellency might in his o.wn per¬ 
sonal sufferings have a value great enough to satisfy for all 
the whole kind of sinning persons. This the Son of God, 
Jesus Christ, God and man, undertook, and finished by a 
sacrifice of himself upon the altar of the cross. 

2. This sacrifice, because it was perfect, could be but 
one, and that once: but because the needs of the world 
should last as long as the world itself, it was necessary, 
that there should be a perpetual ministry established, 
whereby this one sufficient sacrifice should be made eter¬ 
nally effectual to the several new arising needs of all the 
world, who should desire it, or in any sense be capable 
of it. 

3. To this end Christ was made a priest for ever : he was 
initiated or consecrated on the cross, and there began his 
priesthood, which was to last till his coming to judgment. 
It began on earth, but was to last and be officiated in hea¬ 
ven, where he sits perpetually representing and exhibiting 
to the Father that great effective sacrifice, w hich he offered 
on the cross, to eternal and never-failing purposes. 

4. As Christ is pleased to represent to his Father that 
great sacrifice as a means of atonement and expiation for 
all mankind, and with special purposes and intendment for 
all the elect, all that serve him in holiness: so he hath 
appointed, that the same ministry shall be done upon 
earth too, in our manner, and according to our proportion ,* 
and therefore hath constituted and separated an order of men, 
who, by “ showing forth the Lord’s death,” by sacramental 
representation, may pray unto God after the same manner 

Z 


PREPARATION TO 


242 

that our Lord and high-priest does, that is, offer to God and 
represent in this solemn prayer and sacrament, Christ as 
already offered ; so sending up a gracious instrument, where¬ 
by our prayers may, for his sake and in the same manner of 
intercession, be offered up lo God in our behalf, and for all 
them for whom we pray, to all those purposes for which 
Christ died. 

5. As the ministers of the sacrament do, in a sacra¬ 
mental manner, present to God the sacrifice of the cross, 
by being imitators of Christ’s intercession: so the people 
are sacrifices too in their manner: for besides that, by 
saying Amen, they join in the act of him that ministers, and 
make it also to be their own ; so, when they eat and drink 
the consecrated and blessed elements worthily, they re 
ceive Christ within them, and therefore may also offer him 
to God, while, in their sacrifice of obedience and thanks¬ 
giving, they present themselves to God with Christ, whom 
they have spiritually received, that is, themselves with that, 
which will make them gracious and acceptable. The offer¬ 
ing their bodies and souls and services to God in him, and 
by him, and with him, who is his Father’s well-beloved, and 
in whom he is well pleased, cannot but be accepted to all 
the purposes of blessing, grace, and glory. 

6. This is the sum of the greatest mystery of our reli¬ 
gion ; it is the copy of the passion, and the ministration of 
the great mystery of our redemption : and therefore, what¬ 
soever entitles us to the general privileges of Christ’s 
passion, all that is necessary by way of disposition to the 
celebration of the sacrament of his passion; because this 
celebration is our manner of applying or using it. The par¬ 
ticulars of which preparation are represented in the fol¬ 
lowing rules. 

1. No man must dare to approach to the holy sacrament 
of the Lord’s supper, if he be in a state of any one sin, 
that is, unless he have entered into the state of repentance, 
that is, of sorrow and amendment; lest it be said concern¬ 
ing him, as it was concerning Judas, the hand of him that 
betrayeth me, is with me on the table: and he that re- 
ceiveth Christ into an impure soul or body, first turns his 
most excellent nourishment into poison, and then feeds 
upon it. 

2. Every communicant must first have examined him¬ 
self, that is, tried the condition and state of his soul 


THE HOLY SACRAMENT. 


243 


searched out the secret ulcers, inquired out its Weaknesses 
and indiscretions, and all those aptnesses, where it is ex¬ 
posed to temptation ; that by finding out its diseases he 
may find a cure ; and by discovering its aptnesses he may 
secure its present purposes of future amendment, and may 
be armed against dangers and temptations. 

3. This examination must be a man’s own act, and in¬ 
quisition in his life : but then also it should lead a man on 
to run to those, whom the great Physician of our souls, Christ 
Jesus, hath appointed to minister physic to our diseases ; 
that, in all dangers and great accidents, we may be assisted 
for comfort and remedy, for medicine and caution. 

4. In this affair let no man deceive himself, and against 
such a time which public authority hath appointed for us 
to receive the sacrament, weep for his sins by way of so¬ 
lemnity and ceremony, and still retain the affection ; but 
he that comes to this feast, must have on the wedding- 
garment, that is, he must have put on Jesus Christ, and 
he must have put off the old man with his affections and 
lusts: and he must be wholly conformed to Christ in the 
image of his mind. For then we have put on Christ, 
when our souls are clothed with his righteousness, when 
every faculty of our soul is proportioned and vested ac¬ 
cording to the pattern of Christ’s life. And therefore a 
man must not leap from his last night’s surfeit and bath, 
and then communicate; but when he hath begun the work 
of God effectually, and made some progress in repentance, 
and hath walked some stages and periods in the ways of 
godliness, then let him come to him that is to minister it, 
and having made known the state of his soul, he is to be 
admitted: but to receive it into an unhallowed soul and 
body, is to receive the dust of the tabernacle in the waters 
of jealousy ; it will make the belly to swell, and the thigh 
to rot, it will not convey Christ to us, but the devil will 
enter and dwell there, till with it he returns to his dwell¬ 
ing of torment. Remember always, that after a great sin, 
or after a habit of sins, a man is not soon made clean; 
and no unclean thing must come to this feast. It is not 
the preparation of two or three days, that can render a 
person capable of this banquet: for, in this feast, all Christ, 
and Christ’s passion, and all his graces, the blessings and 
effects of his sufferings, are conveyed. Nothing can fit us 
for this, but what can unite us to Christ, and obtain of him 


244 


PREPARATION TO 


to present our needs to his heavenly Father : this sacrament 
can no otherwise be celebrated but upon the same terms, on 
which we may hope for pardon and heaven itself. 

5. When we have this general and indispensably-neces- 
sary preparation, we are to make our souls more adorned 
and trimmed up with circumstances of pious actions and 
special devotions, setting apart some portion of our time im¬ 
mediately before the day of solemnity, according as our 
great occasions will permit: and this time is especially to 
be spent in actions of repentance, confession of our sins, 
renewing our purposes of holy living, praying for pardon of 
our failings, and for those graces, which may prevent the 
like sadnesses for the time to come, meditation upon the 
passion, upon the infinite love of God expressed in so great 
mysterious manners of redemption ; and indefinitely in all 
acts of virtue, which may build our souls up into a temple 
fit for the reception of Christ himself and the inhabitation 
of the Holy Spirit. 

6. The celebration of the holy sacrament being the most 
solemn prayer, joined with the most effectual instrument 
of its acceptance, must suppose us in the love of God and 
in charity with all the world : and therefore we must, be¬ 
fore every communion especially, remember what differ¬ 
ences or jealousies are between us and any one else, and 
recompose all disunions, and cause right understandings 
between each other ; offering to satisfy whom we have in¬ 
jured, and to forgive them who have injured us, without 
thoughts of resuming the quarrel, when the solemnity is 
over; for that is but to rake the embers in light and fan¬ 
tastic ashes: it must be quenched, and a holy flame en¬ 
kindled : no fires must be at all, but the fires of love and 
zeal: and the altar of incense will send up a sweet perfume, 
and make atonement for us. 

7. When the day of the feast is come, lay aside all cares 
and impertinences of the world, and remember that this is 
thy soul’s day, a day of traffic and intercourse with heaven. 
Arise early in the morning. 1. Give God thanks for the 
approach of so great a blessing. 2. Confess thine own 
unworthiness to admit so Divine a guest. 3. Then re¬ 
member and deplore thy sins, which have made thee so 
unworthy. 4. Then confess God’s goodness, and take 
sanctuary there, and upon him place thy hopes. 5. And 
invite him to thee with renewed acts of love, of holy desire, 


THE HOLY SACRAMENT. 


245 

of hatred of his enemy, sin. 6. Make oblation of thyself 
wholly to be disposed by him, to the obedience of him, to 
his providence and possession, and pray him to enter and 
dwell there for ever. And after this, with joy and holy 
fear and the forwardness of love, address thyself to the re¬ 
ceiving of him, to whom, and by whom, and for whom, all 
faith, and all hope, and all love, in the whole catholic church, 
both in heaven and earth, is designed ; him, whom kings, 
and queens, and whole kingdoms, are in love with, and 
count it the greatest honour in the world, that their crowns 
and sceptres are laid at his holy feet. 

8. When the holy man stands at the table of blessing, 
and ministers the rite of consecration, then do as the angels 
do, who behold, and love, and wonder that the Son of 
God should become food to the souls of his servants ; that 
he, who cannot suffer any change or lessening, should be 
broken into pieces, and enter into the body to support and 
nourish the spirit, and yet at the same time remain in hea¬ 
ven, while he descends to thee upon earth; that he who 
hath essential felicity, should become miserable and die for 
thee, and then give himself to thee for ever to redeem thee 
from sin and misery; that by his wounds he should procure 
health to thee, and by his affronts he should entitle thee 
to glory, by his death he should bring thee to life, and by 
becoming a man he should make thee partaker of the Divine 
nature. These are such glories, that although they are 
made so obvious, that each eye may behold them, yet they 
are also so deep, that no thought can fathom them ; but 
so it hath pleased him to make these mysteries to be sensi¬ 
ble, because the excellency and depth of the mercy is not 
intelligible ; that while we are ravished and comprehended 
within the infiniteness of so vast and mysterious a mercy, 
yet we may be as sure of it as of that thing we see, and 
feel, and smell, and taste; but yet it is so great, that we 
cannot understand it. 

9. These holy mysteries are offered to our senses, but 
not to be placed under our feet: they are sensible, but not 
common : and therefore as the weakness of the elements 
adds wonder to the excellency of the sacrament: so let 
our reverence and venerable usages of them add honour 
to the elements, and acknowledge the glory of the mystery, 
and the divinity of the mercy. Let us receive the conse¬ 
crated elements with all devotion and humility of body and 

z 2 


RECEIVING THE 


24(3 

spirit; and do this honour to it, that it be the first food we 
eat, and the first beverage we drink that day, unless it be 
in case of sickness, or other great necessity ; and that yoio* 
body and soul both be prepared to its reception with ab¬ 
stinence from secular pleasures, that you may better have 
attended fastings and preparatory prayers. For if ever it 
be seasonable to observe the counsel of St. Paul, that mar¬ 
ried persons by consent should abstain for a time, that they 
may attend to solemn religion, it is now. It was not by St. 
Paul nor the after-ages of the church called a duty so to do, 
but it is most reasonable, that the more solemn actions of 
religion should be attended to without the mixture of any 
thing that may discompose the mind and make it more 
secular or less religious. 

10. In the act of receiving, exercise acts of faith with 
much confidence and resignation, believing it not to be 
common bread and wine, but holy in their use, holy in 
their signification, holy in their change, and holy in their 
effect: and believe, if thou art a worthy communicant, thou 
dost as verily receive Christ’s body and blood to all effects 
and purposes of the Spirit, as thou dost receive the blessed 
elements into thy mouth, that thou puttest thy finger to his 
hand, and thy hand into his side, and thy lips to hisfontinel 
of blood, sucking life from his heart: and yet if thou dost 
communicate unworthily, thou eatest and drinkest Christ 
to thy danger, and death, and destruction. Dispute not 
concerning the secret of the mystery, and the nicety of the 
manner of Christ’s presence : it is sufficient to thee, that 
Christ shall be present to thy soul, as an instrument of 
grace, as a pledge of the resurrection, as the earnest of 
glory and immortality, and a means of many intermedial 
blessings, even all such as are necessary for thee, and are 
in order to thy salvation. And to make all this good to 
thee, there is nothing necessary on thy part but a holy life, 
and a true belief of all the sayings of Christ; amongst 
which, indefinitely assent to the words of institution, and 
believe that Christ, in the holy sacrament, gives thee his 
body and his blood. He that believes so much, needs not 
to inquire farther, nor to entangle his faith by disbelieving 
his sense. 

11. Fail not, at this solemnity, according to the custom 
of pious and devout people, to make an offering to God 
for uses of religion and the poor, according to thy ability. 


HOLY SACRAMENT. 


247 

For when Christ feasts his body, let us also feast our fel¬ 
low-members, who have right to the same promises, and 
are partakers of the same sacrament, and partners of the 
same hope, and cared for under the same Providence, and 
descended from the same common parents, and whose 
Father God is, and Christ is their elder brother. If thou 
chancest to communicate, where this holy custom is not 
observed publicly, supply that want by thy private charity ; 
but offer it to God at his holy table, at least by thy private 
designing it there. 

12. When you have received, pray and gi\^ thanks. 
Pray for all estates of men; for they also have an interest 
in the body of Christ, whereof they are members • and you, 
in conjunction with Christ (whom then you have received,) 
are more fit to pray for them in that advantage, and in the 
celebration of that holy sacrifice, which then is sacrament¬ 
ally represented to God. Give thanks for the passion of 
our dearest Lord : remember all its parts, and all the instru¬ 
ments of your redemption ; and beg of God, that by a holy 
perseverance in well-doing, you may from shadows pass on 
to substances, from eating his body to seeing his face, from 
the typical, sacramental, and transient, to the real and 
eternal supper of the Lamb. 

13. After the solemnity is done, let Christ dwell in your 
hearts by faith, and love, and obedience, and conformity 
to his life and death: as you have taken Christ into you, 
so put Christ on you, and conform every faculty of your 
soul and body to his holy image and perfection. Re¬ 
member that now Christ is all one with you; and there¬ 
fore when you are to do an action, consider how Christ 
did, or would do, the like, and do you imitate his example, 
and transcribe his copy, and understand all his command¬ 
ments, and choose all that he propounded, and desire his 
promises, and fear his threatenings, and marry his loves and 
hatreds, and contract his friendships ; for then you do every 
day communicate; especially when Christ thus dwells in 
you, and you in Christ, growing up towards a perfect man 
in Christ Jesus. 

14. Do not instantly, upon your return from church, 
return also to the world, and secular thoughts and employ¬ 
ment; but let the remaining parts of that day be like a 
post-communion, or an after-office, entertaining your bless¬ 
ed Lord with all the caresses and sweetness of love and 


RECEIVING THE 


248 

colloquies, and intercourses of duty and affection, acquaint¬ 
ing him with all your needs, and revealing to him all your 
secrets, and opening all your infirmities ; and as the affairs 
of your persons or employment call you off, so retire again 
with often ejaculations and acts of entertainment to your 
beloved guest. 

The Effects and Benefits of Worthy Communicating . 

When I said, that the sacrifice of the cross, which Christ 
offered for all the sins and all the needs of the world, is re¬ 
present^ to God by the minister in the sacrament, and 
offered up in prayer and sacramental memory, after the 
manner that Christ himself intercedes for us in heaven (so 
far as his glorious priesthood is imitable by his ministers on 
earth,) I must of necessity also mean, that all the benefits 
of that sacrifice are then conveyed to all that communi¬ 
cate worthily. But if we descend to particulars, then and 
there the church is nourished in her faith, strengthened in 
her hope, enlarged in her bowels with an increasing cha¬ 
rity ; there all the members of Christ are joined with each 
other, and all to Christ their head; and we again renew 
the covenant with God in Jesus Christ, and God seals his 
part, and we promise for ours, and Christ unites both, and 
the Holy Ghost signs both in the collation of those graces 
which we then pray for, and exercise and receive all at 
once. There our bodies are nourished with the signs, and our 
souls with the mystery ; our bodies receive into them the 
seed of an immortal nature, and our souls are joined with him, 
who is the first-fruits of the resurrection, and never can die. 
And if we desire any thing else and need it, here it is to be 
prayed for, here to be hoped for, here to be received. Long 
life and health, and recovery from sickness, and competent 
support and maintenance, and peace and deliverance from 
our enemies, and content, and patience, and joy, and sanc¬ 
tified riches, or a cheerful poverty, and liberty, and whatso¬ 
ever else is a blessing, was purchased for us by Christ in 
his death and resurrection, and in his intercession in heaven. 
And this sacrament being that to our particulars which the 
great mysteries are in themselves, and by design to all the 
world, if we receive worthily, we shall receive any of these 
blessings, according as God shall choose for us ; and he wil 1 
not only choose with more wisdom, but also with more af 
fection, than we can for ourselves. 


HOLY SACRAMENT. 


249 

After all this, it is advised by the guides of souls, wise 
men and pious, that all persons should communicate very 
often, even as often as they can without excuses or delays. 
Every thing that puts us from so holy an employment, 
when we are moved to it, being either a sin or an imper¬ 
fection, an infirmity or indevotion, and an inactiveness of 
spirit. All Christian people must come. They indeed, that 
are in the state of sin, must not come so, but yet they must 
come. First they must quit their state of death, and then 
partake of the bread of life. They that are at enmity with 
their neighbours, must come, that is no excuse for their not 
coming; only they must not bring their enmity along with 
them, but leave it, and then come. They that have variety 
of secular employment, must come; only they must leave 
their secular thoughts and affections behind them, and then 
come and converse with God. If any man be well grown 
in grace, he must needs come, because he is excellently 
disposed to so holy a feast: but he that is but in the infancy 
of piety, had need to come, that so he may grow in grace. 
The strong must come, lest they become weak ; and the 
weak, that they may become strong. The sick must come 
to be cured, the healthful to be preserved. They that have 
leisure must come, because they have no excuse : they that 
have no leisure, must come hither, that by so excellent re¬ 
ligion they may sanctify their business. The penitent sin¬ 
ners must come, that they may be justified; and they that 
are justified, that they may be justified still. They that have 
fears and great reverence to these mysteries, and think no 
preparation to be sufficient, must receive, that they may 
learn how to receive the more worthily : and they that have 
a less degree of reverence, must come often to have it height¬ 
ened : that as those creatures that live amongst the snows 
of the mountains, turn white with their food and conver¬ 
sation with such perpetual whitenesses ; so our souls may be 
transformed into the similitude and union with Christ by 
our perpetual feeding on him, and conversation, not only in 
his courts, but in his very heart, and most secret affections, 
and incomparable purities. 


250 


PRATERS FOR 


Prayers for all sorts of Men and all Necessities ; relating 
to the several parts of the Virtue of Religion. 

A Prayer for the graces of Faith , Hope , Charity. 

O Lord God of infinite mercy, of infinite excellency, who 
hast sent thy holy Son into the world to redeem us from 
an intolerable misery, and to teach us a holy religion, and 
to forgive us an infinite debt; give me thy Holy Spirit, that 
my understanding and all my faculties may be so resigned 
to the discipline and doctrine of my Lord, that I may be 
prepared in mind and will to die for the testimony of Jesus, 
and to suffer any affliction or calamity, that shall offer to 
hinder my duty, or tempt me to shame or sin or apostacy : 
and let my faith be the parent of a good life, a strong shield 
to repel the fiery darts of the devil, and the author of a 
holy hope, of modest desires, of confidence in God, and of 
a never-failing charity to thee my God, and to all the 
world ; that I may never have my portion with the unbe¬ 
lievers, or uncharitable and desperate persons; but may 
be supported by the strengths of faith in all temptations, 
and may be refreshed with the comforts of a holy hope in 
all my sorrows, and may bear the burden of the Lord, and 
the infirmities of my neighbour by the support of charity ; 
that the yoke of Jesus may become easy to me, and my 
love may do all the miracles of grace, till from grace it 
swell to glory, from earth to heaven, from duty to reward, 
from the imperfections of a beginning and little growing 
love, it may arrive to the consummation of an eternal and 
never-ceasing charity, through Jesus Christ the Son of thy 
love, the anchor of our hope, and the author and finishei 
of our faith: to whom, with thee, O Lord^God, Father of 
heaven and earth, and with thy Holy Spirit, be all glory, 
and love, and obedience, and dominion, now and for ever. 
Amen. 

Acts of Love hy way of Prayer and Ejaculation ; to he 

used in Private. 

O God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee : my soul 
thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and 
thirsty land, where no water is; to see thy power and thy 
glory so, as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy 
loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. 
Psal. lxiii. 1, &c. 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


251 

1 am ready not only to be bound, but to die for the name 
of the Lord Jesus. Acts xxi. 13. 

How amiable are thy tabernacles, thou Lord of Hosts! 
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the 
Lord : my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. 
Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will still be 
praising thee. Psal. lxxxiv. 1,2, 4. 

O blessed Jesu, thou art worthy of all adoration, and all 
honour, and all love : thou art the wonderful, the counsellor, 
the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace; 
of thy government and peace there shall be no end: thou 
art the brightness of thy Father’s glory, the express image 
of his person, the appointed heir of all things. Thou up- 
holdest all things by the word of thy power; thou didst by 
thyself purge our sins : thou art set on the right iiand of the 
Majesty on high: thou art made better than the angels ; 

. thou hast by inheritance obtained a more excellent name 
than they. Thou, O dearest Jesus, art the head of the 
church, the beginning and the first-born from the dead ; in 
all things thou hast the pre-eminence, and it pleased the 
Father, that in thee should all fulness dwell. Kingdoms 
are in love with thee : kings lay their crowns and sceptres 
at thy feet, and queens are thy handmaids, and wash the 
feet of thy servants. 

A Prayer to be said in any affliction, as death of Children, of 
Husband or Wife, in great Poverty, in Imprisonment, in a 
sad and disconsolate Spirit, and in Temptations to Despair. 

O eternal God, Father of mercies, and God of all com¬ 
fort, with much mercy look upon the sadnesses and sor¬ 
rows of thy servant. My sins lie heavy upon me, and press 
me sore, and there is no health in my bones by reason of 
thy displeasure and my sin. The waters are gone over me, 
and I stick fast in the deep mire, and my miseries are with¬ 
out comfort, because they are punishments of my sin: and 
I am so evil and unworthy a person, that though I have 
great desires, yeti have no dispositions or worthiness toward 
receiving comfort. My sins have caused my sorrow, and 
my sorrow does not cure my sins : and unless for thy own 
sake, and merely because thou art good, thou shalt pity me 
and relieve me, I am as much without remedy, as now I am 
without comfort. Lord, pity me ; Lord, let thy grace refresh 
my spirit. Let thy comforts support me, thy mercy pardon 


252 


PRAYERS FOR 


me, and never let my portion be amongst hopeless and ac 
cursed spirits: for thou art good and gracious; and I throw 
myself upon thy mercy. Let me never let my hold go, and 
do thou with me what seems good in thy own eyes. I can¬ 
not suffer more than I have deserved : and yet I can need 
no relief so great as thy mercy is ; for thou art infinitely 
more merciful than I can be miserable ,* and thy mercy, 
which is above all thy own works, must needs be far above 
all my sin and all my misery. Dearest Jesus, let me trust 
in thee for ever, and let me never be confounded. Amen. 

Ejaculations and short Meditations to he used in time of 
Sickness and Sorrow: or danger of Death. 

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee.* 
Hide not thy face from me in the time of my trouble, incline 
thine ear unto me, when I call: O hear me and that right 
soon. For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones 
are burnt up, as it were a fireband. My heart is smitten 
down and withered like grass, so that I forget to eat my 
bread; and that because of thine indignation and wrath : 
for thou hast taken me up and cast me down : thine arrows 
stick fast in me, and thine hand presseth me sore.f There 
is no health in my flesh because of thy displeasure ,* nei¬ 
ther is there any rest in my bones by reason of my sin. My 
wickednesses are gone over my head, and are a sore burden 
too heavy for me to bear. But I will confess my wickedness, 
and be sorry for my sin. O Lord, rebuke me not in thine 
indignation, neither chasten me in thy displeasure.^; Lord, 
be merciful unto me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against 
thee.§ 

Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness, 
according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine 
offences.|| O remember not the sins and offences of my 
youth: but according to thy mercy think thou upon me, O 
Lord, for thy goodness.1T Wash me thoroughly from my 
wickedness ; and cleanse me from my sin. Make me a 
clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.** 
Cast me not away from thy presence, from thy all-hallow¬ 
ing and life-giving presence : and take not thy Holy Spi¬ 
rit, thy sanctifying, thy guiding, thy comforting, thy sup¬ 
porting, and confirming Spirit from me. 

* Psal. cii. 2—4. 10. t Psal. xxxviii. 2—4. 18. J Psal. vi. 1. $ Psal. xli. 4. 

[I Psal. li. 1. IT Psal. xxv. 6. ** Psal. li. 2.10,11. 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


253 


O God: thou art my God for ever and ever: thou shaJt 
be my guide unto death.* Lord, comfort me, now that I 
lie sick upon my bed : make thou my bed in all my sick¬ 
ness.']' O deliver my soul from the place of hell: and do 
thou receive me.:]: My heart is disquieted within me, and 
the fear of death is fallen upon me.§ Behold thou hast 
made my days as it were a span long, and my age is even 
as nothing in respect of thee ; and verily every man living 
is altogether vanity.|| When thou with rebukes dost chasten 
man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like 
a moth fretting a garment: every man therefore is but va- 
nity. And now, Lord, what is my hope ? truly my hope is 
even in thee. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears 
consider my calling : hold not thy peace at my tears. Take 
this plague away from me : I am consumed by the means 
of thy heavy hand. I am a stranger with thee and a so- 
iourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me a little, that I 
may recover my strength, before I go hence and be no more 
seen. My soul cleaveth unto the dust: O quicken me ac¬ 
cording to thy word.IT And when the snares of death com¬ 
pass me round about, let not the pains of hell take hold 
upon me.** 

An Act of Faith concerning the Resurrection and the Day of 

Judgment , to he said by Sick Persons , or meditated. 

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand 
at the latter day upon the earth : and though after my skin 
worms destroy this body, yet, in my flesh, shall I see God: 
whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, 
though my reins be consumed within me. Job xix. 25, &c. 

God shall come and shall not keep silence: there shall go 
before him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall 
be stirred up round about him; he shall call the heaven from 
above, and the earth, that he may judge his people.ff O 
blessed Jesu, thou art my judge, and thou art my advocate: 
have mercy upon me in the hour of my death, and in the 
day of judgment. See John v. 28, and Thess. iv. 15. 

Short Prayers to he said by Sick Persons . 

O Holy Jesus, thou art a merciful high-priest, and 

* Psal. xlviii. 13. t Psal. xli. 3. t Psal xlix. 15. $ Psal. lv. 4. 

|i Psal. xxxix. 6. IT Psal. cxix 25. ** Psal. cxvi. 3. ft Psal.i. 3,4 

2 A 


254 


PRAYERS FOR 


touched with the sense of our infirmities; thou knowest 
the sharpness of my sickness and the weakness of my per¬ 
son. The clouds are gathered about me, and thou hast 
covered me with thy storm: my understanding hath not 
such apprehension of things as formerly. Lord, let thy 
mercy support me, thy Spirit guide me, and lead me through 
the valley of this death safely ; that I may pass it patiently, 
holily, with perfect resignation ; and let me rejoice in the 
Lord, in the hopes of pardon, in the expectation of glory, 
in the sense of thy mercies, in the refreshments of thy Spi¬ 
rit, in a victory over all temptations. 

Thou hast promised to be with us in tribulation. Lord, 
my soul is troubled, and my body is weak, and my hope is 
in thee, and my enemies are busy and mighty: now make 
good thy holy promise. Now, O holy Jesus, now let thy 
hand of grace be upon me : restrain my ghostly enemies, 
and give me all sorts of spiritual assistances. Lord, re¬ 
member thy servant in the day when thou bindest up thy 
jewels. 

O take from me all tediousness of spirit, all impatience 
and unquietness: let me possess my soul in patience, and 
resign my soul and body into thy hands, as into the hands 
of a faithful Creator, and a blessed Redeemer. 

O holy Jesu, thou didst die for us ; by thy sad, pungent 
and intolerable pains, which thou enduredst for me, have 
pity on me, and ease my pain, or increase my patience. 
Lay on me no more than thou shalt enable me to bear. I 
have deserved it all and more, and infinitely more. Lord, 
I am weak and ignorant, timorous and inconstant, and I 
fear, lest something should happen that may discompose 
the state of my soul, that may displease thee: do what 
thou wilt with me, so thou dost but preserve me in thy fear 
and favour. Thou knowest, that it is my great fear; but 
let thy Spirit secure, that nothing may be able to separate 
me from the love of God in Jesus Christ; then smite me 
here, that thou mayest spare me for ever: and yet, O 
Lord, smite me friendly ; for thou knowest my infirmities. 
Into thy hands I commend my spirit, for thou hast re¬ 
deemed me, O Lord, thou God of truth. Come, Holy 
Spirit, help me in this conflict. Come, Lord Jesus, come 
quickly. 

Let the sick man often meditate upon these following pro 
mises and gracious words of God. 


SEVERAL OCC ASIONS. 


255 

My help cometh of the Lord, who preserveth them that 
are true of heart. Psal. vii. 11. 

And all they that know thy name, will put their trust in 
thee : for thou, Lord, hast never failed them that seek thee. 
Psal. ix. 10. 

O how plentiful is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up 
for them that fear thee, and that thou hast prepared for 
them that put their trust in thee, even before the sons of 
men! Psal. xxxi. 21. 

Behold the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, 
and upon them that put their trust in his mercy, to deliver 
their souls from death. Psal. xxxiii. 17. 

The Lord is nigh unto them, that are of a contrite heart; 
and will save such as are of an humble spirit. Psal. xxxiv. 
18. 

Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast: how excel¬ 
lent is thy mercy, O God! and the children of men shall 
put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. Psal. 
xxxvi. 7. 

They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of the 
house: and thou shalt give them to drink of thy pleasures, 
as out of the rivers, ver. 8. 

For with thee is the well of life ; and in thy light we 
shall see light, ver. 9. 

Commit thy way unto the Lord, and put thy trust in him, 
and he shall bring it to pass. -Psal. xxxvii. 5. 

But the salvation of the righteous cometh of the Lord: 
who is also their strength in the time of trouble, ver. 40. 

So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the 
righteous : doubtless there is a God, that judgeth the earth. 
Psal. lviii. 10. 

Blessed is the man, whom thou choosest and receives, 
unto thee: he shall dwell in thy court, and shall be satis¬ 
fied with the pleasures of thy house, even of thy holy tem¬ 
ple. Psal. lxv. 4. 

They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy. Psal. cxxvi. 6. 
It is written, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. 

Heb. xiii. 5. . , _ j 

The prayer of faith shall save the sick ; and the Lord 

shall raise him up : and if he have committed sins, they 

shall be forgiven him. Jam. v. 15. 

Come and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath 


256 PRAYERS FOR 

torn and he will heal us: he hath smitten, and he will bind 
us up. Hos. vi. 1. 

If we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
Christ the righteous ; and he is the propitiation for our sins. 
1 John ii. 1,2. 

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to for¬ 
give us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 
1 John i. 9. 

He that forgives, shall be forgiven. Luke vi. 37. 

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if 
we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us. 
1 John v. 14. 

And ye know, that he was manifested to take away our 
sins. 1 John iii. 5. 

If ye, being evil, know how to give good things to your 
children ; how much more shall your Father, which is in 
heaven, give good things to them that ask him ? Matt. vii. 
11 . 

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. 
1 Tim. i. 15. 

He that hath given us his Son, how should not he, with 
him, give us all things else 1 Rom. viii. 32. 

Acts of Hope, to be used by Sick Persons after a pious Life. 

I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things 
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom. viii. 38, 39. 

I have fought a good fight: I have finished my course : I 
have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a 
crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge 
shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all 
them also that love his appearing. 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8. 

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the Father of mercies and the God of all comforts, who 
comforts us in all our tribulation. 2 Cor. i. 3, 4. 

A Prayer to be said in behalf of a sick or dying Person. 

O Lord God, there is no number of thy days nor of thy 
mercies, and the sins and sorrows of thy servant also are 
multiplied. Lord, look upon him with much mercy and pity 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


257 

forgive him all his sins, comfort his sorrows, ease his pain, 
satisfy his doubts, relieve his fears, instruct his ignorances, 
strengthen his understanding, take from him all disorders 
of spirit, weakness, and abuse of fancy. Restrain the ma¬ 
lice and power of the spirits of darkness; and suffer him 
to be injured neither by his ghostly enemies, nor his own 
infirmities ; and let a holy and a just peace, the peace of 
God, be within his conscience. 

Lord, preserve his senses till the last of his time, 
strengthen his faith, confirm his hope, and give him a never- 
ceasing charity to thee our God, and to all the world : stir 
up in him a great and proportionable contrition for all the 
evils he hath done, and give him a just measure of patience 
for all he suffers: give him prudence, memory, and con 
sideration, rightly to state the accounts of his soul; and 
do thou remind him of all hi^ duty; that when it shall 
please thee, that his soul goes out from the prison of his 
body, it may be received by angels, and preserved from the 
surprise of evil spirits, and from the horrors and amaze¬ 
ments of new and strange regions, and be laid up in the 
bosom of our Lord, till, at the day of thy second coming, 
it shall be reunited to the body, which is now to be laid 
down in weakness and dishonour, but we humbly beg, 
may then be raised up with glory and power, for ever to live 
and to behold the face of God in the glories of the Lord 
Jesus, who is our hope, our resurrection, and our life, the 
light of our eyes and the joy of our souls, our blessed and 
ever-glorious Redeemer. Amen. 

Hither the sick person may draw in, and use the acts of 
several virtues respersed in the several parts of this 
book, the several litanies, viz. of repentance, of the pas¬ 
sion, and the single prayers, according to his present 
needs. 

A Prayer to be said in a Storm at Sea. 

O my God, thou didst create the earth and the sea for thy 
glory and the use of man, and dost daily show wonders in 
the deep: look upon the danger and fear of thy servant. 
My sins have taken hold upon me, and without the support¬ 
ing arm of thy mercy, I cannot look up; but my trust is in 
thee. Do thou, O Lord, rebuke the sea, and make it calm ; 
for to thee the winds and the sea obey: let not the waters 
swallow me up, but let thy Spirit, the spirit of gentleness 

2 a 2 ' 


258 


PRAYERS FOR 


and mercy, move upon the waters. Be thou reconciled unto 
thy servants, and then the face of the waters will be smooth. 
I fear that my sins make me, like Jonas, the cause of the 
tempest. Cast out all my sins, and throw not thy servants 
away from thy presence, and from the land of the living, 
into the depths, where all things are forgotten. But if it 
be thy will, that we shall go down into the waters, Lord, 
receive my soul into thy holy hands, and preserve it in 
mercy and safety till the day of restitution of all things : and 
be pleased to unite my death to the death of thy Son, and 
to accept of it, so united, as a punishment for all my sins, 
that thou mayest forget all thine anger, and blot n^ sins 
out of thy book, and write my soul there, for Jesus Christ 
his sake, our dearest Lord and most mighty Redeemer. 
Amen. 

Then make an Act of Designation, thus : 

To God pertain the issues of life and death. It is the 
Lord, let him do what seemeth good in his own eyes. “ Thy 
will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” 

Recite Psalm cvii. and cxxx. 

A Form of a Vovj to be made in this or the like Danger. 

If the Lord will be gracious and hear the prayer of his 
servant, and bring me safe to shore, then I will praise him 
secretly and publicly, and pay unto the uses of charity 
[or religion] [ then name the sum you design for holy 
O my God, my goods are nothing unto thee : I will also be 
thy servant all the days of my life, and remember this mercy 
and my present purposes, and live more to God’s glory, and 
with a stricter duty. And do thou please to accept this 
vow as an instance of my importunity, and the greatness of 
my needs : and be thou graciously moved to pity and deli¬ 
ver me. Amen. 

This form also may be used in praying for a blessing on an 
enterprise, and may be instanced in actions of devotion 
as well as of charity. 

A Prayer before a Journey 

O almighty God, who fillest all things with thy presence, 
and art a God afar off as well as near at hand; thou didst 
send thy angel to bless Jacob in his journey, and didst lead 
the children of Israel through the Red Sea, making it a 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


259 

wall on the right hand and on the left: be pleased to let 
thy angel go out before me and guide me in my journey, 
preserving me from dangers of robbers, from violence of 
enemies, and sudden and sad accidents, from falls and er¬ 
rors. And prosper my journey to thy glory, and to all 
my innocent purposes: and preserve me from all sin, 
that I may return in peace and holiness, with thy favour 
and thy blessing, and may serve thee in thankfulness and 
obedience, all the days of my pilgrimage ; and at last 
bring me to thy country, to the celestial Jerusalem, there to 
dwell in thy house, and to sing praises to thee for ever. 
Amen. 

Ad Sect. 4.] A Prayer to be said before the hearing .»r 
reading the Word of God. 

O holy and eternal Jesus, who hast begotten us by thy 
word, renewed us by thy Spirit, fed us by thy sacraments, 
and by the daily ministry of thy word, still go on to build 
us up to life eternal. Let thy most Holy Spirit be pre¬ 
sent with me and rest upon me in the reading, or hearing, 
thy sacred word; that I may do it humbly, reverently, 
without prejudice, with a mind ready and desirous to learn 
and to obey ; that I may be readily furnished and instruct¬ 
ed to every good work, and may practise all thy holy laws 
and commandments, to the glory of thy holy name, O holy 
and eternal Jesus. Amen. 

Ad Sect* 5, 9, 10.] A Form of Confession of Sins and Re- 
pentance, to be used upon Fasting Days, or Days of Hu¬ 
miliation ; especially in Lent, and before the Holy Sa¬ 
crament. 

“ Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness ; 
according to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine 
offences. For I will confess my wickedness, and be sorry 
for my sin.” O my dearest Lord, I am not worthy to be 
accounted amongst the meanest of thy servants ; not worthy 
to be sustained by the least fragments of thy mercy, but 
to be shut out of thy presence for ever with dogs and un¬ 
believers. “ But for thy name’s sake, O Lord, be merciful 
unto my sin, for it is great.” 

I am the vilest of sinners, and the worst of men: proud 
and vain-glorious, impatient of scorn or of just reproof; not 


•260 


PRAYERS FOR 


enduring to be slighted, and yet extremely deserving it: 1 
have been cozened by the colours of humility, and when 
I have truly called myself vicious, I could not endure 
any man else should say or think so. I have been dis 
obedient to my superiors, churlish and ungentle in my 
behaviour, unchristian and unmanly. “ But for thy name’s 
sake,” &c. 

O just and dear God, how can I expect pity or pardon, 
who am so angry and peevish, with and without cause, 
envious at good, rejoicing at the evil of my neighbours, 
negligent of my charge, idle and useless, timorous and 
base, jealous and impudent, ambitious and hard-hearted, 
soft, unmortified, and effeminate in my life, undevout in my 
prayers, without fancy or affection, without attendance to 
them or perseverance in them : but passionate and curious 
in pleasing my appetite of meat and drink and pleasures, 
making matter both for sin and sickness ; and I have reaped 
the cursed fruits of such improvidence, entertaining inde¬ 
cent and impure thoughts; and I have brought them forth 
in indecent and impure actions, and the spirit of unclean¬ 
ness hath entered in, and unhallowed the temple, which 
thou didst consecrate for the habitation of thy Spirit of 
love and holiness. But for thy name’s sake, O Lord, be 
merciful unto my sin, for it is great. 

Thou hast given me a whole life to serve thee in, and to 
advance my hopes of heaven : and this precious time 1 
have thrown away upon my sins and vanities, being impro¬ 
vident of my time and of my talent, and of thy grace and 
my own advantages, resisting thy Spirit and quenching 
him. I have been a great lover of myself, and yet used 
many ways to destroy myself. I have pursued my tempo¬ 
ral ends with greediness and indirect means. I am revenge¬ 
ful and unthankful, forgetting benefits, but not so soon for¬ 
getting injuries ; curious and murmuring, a great breaker 
of promises. I have not loved my neighbour’s good, noi 
advanced it in all things, where I could. I have been un¬ 
like thee in all things. I am unmerciful and unjust ; a 
sottish admirer of things below, and careless of heaven and 
the ways that lead thither. 

But for thy name’s sake, O Lord, be merciful unto my 
sin, for it is great. 

All my senses have been windows to let sin in, and death 
by sin. Mine eyes have been adulterous and covetous 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


261 

mine ears open to slander and detraction ; my tongue and 
palate loose and wanton, intemperate, and of foul language, 
talkative and lying, rash and malicious, false and flattering, 
irreligious and irreverent, detracting and censorious ; mj 
hands have been injurious and unclean, my passions violent 
and rebellious, my desires impatient and unreasonable : all 
my members and all my faculties have been servants of 
sin; and my very best actions have more matter of pity 
than of confidence, being imperfect in my best, and intole¬ 
rable in most. But for thy name’s sake, O Lord, &c. 

Unto this and a far bigger heap of sin I have added also 
the faults of others to my own score, by neglecting to hin¬ 
der them to sin in all that I could, and ought; but I also 
have encouraged them in sin, have taken off their fears, and 
hardened their consciences, and tempted them directly, and 
prevailed in it to my own ruin and theirs, unless thy glori¬ 
ous and unspeakable mercy hath prevented so intolerable a 
calamity. 

Lord, I have abused thy mercy, despised thy judgments, 
turned thy grace into wantonness. I have been unthank¬ 
ful for thy infinite loving kindness. I have sinned and re¬ 
pented, and then sinned again, and resolved against it, and 
presently broke it: and then I tied myself up with vows, 
and then was tempted, and then I yielded by little and little, 
till I was willingly lost again, and my vows fell off like 
cords of vanity. 

Miserable man that I am! who shall deliver me from 
this body of sin ? 

And yet, O Lord, I have another heap of sins to be un¬ 
loaded. My secret sins, O Lord, are innumerable, sins I 
noted not; sins that I willingly neglected; sins that I 
acted upon wilful ignorance and voluntary mispersuasion ; 
sins that I have forgot; and sins which a diligent and 
a watchful spirit might have prevented, but I would 
not. Lord, I am confounded with the multitude of them, 
and the horror of their remembrance, though I consider 
them nakedly in their direct appearance, without the 
deformity of their unhandsome and aggravating circum¬ 
stances : but so dressed they are a sight too ugly, an in¬ 
stance of amazement, infinite in degrees, and insufferable 
in their load. 

And yet thou hast spared me all this while, and hast not 


262 


PRAYERS FOR 


thrown me into hell, where I have deserved to have been 
long since, and even now to have been shut up to an eternity 
of torments with insupportable amazement, fearing the re¬ 
velation of thy day. 

Miserable man that I am! who shall deliver me from this 
body of sin 1 

Thou shalt answer for me, O Lord my God. Thou, that 
prayest for me, shalt be my judge. 

The Prayer. 

Thou hast prepared for me a more healthful sorrow: O 
deny not thy servant, when he begs sorrow of thee. Give 
me a deep contrition for my sins, a hearty detestation and 
loathing of them, hating them worse than death with tor¬ 
ments. Give me grace entirely, presently, and for ever, to 
forsake them; to walk with care and prudence, with fear 
and watchfulness all my days; to do all my duty with dili¬ 
gence and charity, with zeal and a never-fainting spirit; to 
redeem the time, to trust upon thy mercies, to make use 
of all the instruments of grace, to work out my salvation 
with fear and trembling: that thou mayest have the glory 
of pardoning all my sins, and I may reap the fruit of all 
thy mercies and all thy graces, of thy patience and long- 
suffering, even to live a holy life here, and to reign with 
thee for ever, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 

Ad Sect. 6.] Special devotions to be used upon the Lord’s- 
day, and the great festivals of Christians. 

In the morning, recite the following form of thanksgiving; 
upon the special festivals adding the commemoration of 
the special blessings according to the following prayers: 
adding such prayers as you shall choose out of the fore¬ 
going devotions. 

2. Besides the ordinary and public duties of the day, if you 
retire into your closet to read and meditate, after you 
have performed that duty, say the Song of Saint Am¬ 
brose, (commonly called the Te Deurn,) or, We praise 
thee, &c.; then add the prayers for particular graces, 
which are at the end of the former chapters, such and 
as many of them as shall fit your present needs and af¬ 
fections ; ending with the Lord’s Prayer. This form of 
devotion may, for variety, be indifferently used at other 
times. 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


263 

A form of thanksgiving, with a recital of public and private 
blessings; to be used upon Easter-day, Whitsunday, 
Ascension-day, and all Sundays of the year: but the 
middle part of it may be reserved for the more solemn 
festivals, and the other used upon the ordinary ; as every 
man’s affections or leisure shall determine. 

[1«] Ex Liturgia S. Basilii magna ex parte, 

O eternal essence, Lord God, Father Almighty, maker 
of all things in heaven and earth ; it is a good thing to 
give thanks to thee, O Lord, and to pay to thee all reverence, 
worship, and devotion, from a clean and prepared heart, 
and with an humble spirit to present a living and reason¬ 
able sacrifice to thy holiness and majesty: for thou hast 
given unto us the knowledge of thy truth ; and who is able 
to declare thy greatness, and to recount all thy marvellous 
works, which thou hast done in all the generations of the 
world ? 

O great Lord and Governor of all things, lord and cre¬ 
ator of all things visible and invisible, who sittest upon the 
throne of thy glory, and beholdest the secrets of the lowest 
abyss and darkness, thou art without beginning, uncircum¬ 
scribed, incomprehensible, unalterable, and seated for ever 
.unmoveable in thy own essential happiness and tranquillity : 
thou art the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is, 

Our dearest and most gracious Saviour, our hope, the 
wisdom of the Father, the image of thy goodness, the word 
eternal, and the brightness of thy person, the power of God 
from eternal ages, the true light, that lighteneth every man 
that cometh into the world, the redemption of man, and the 
sanctification of our spirits. 

By whom the Holy Ghost descended upon the church; 
the Holy Spirit of truth, the seal of adoption, the earnest 
of the inheritance of the saints, the first-fruits of everlast¬ 
ing felicity, the life-giving power, the fountain of sanctifi¬ 
cation, the comfort of the church, the ease of the afflicted, 
the support of the weak, the wealth of the poor, the 
teacher of the doubtful, scrupulous, and ignorant; the an¬ 
chor of the fearful, the infinite reward of all faithful souls; 
by whom all reasonable and understanding creatures serve 
thee, and send up a never-ceasing and a never-rejected sa¬ 
crifice of prayer and praises and adoration. 

All angels and archangels, all thrones and dominions 


264 


PRAYERS FOR 


all principalities and powers, the cherubims with many eyes, 
and the seraphims covered with wings from the terror and 
amazement of thy brightest glory : these, and all the pow¬ 
ers of heaven, do perpetually sing praises and never-ceasing 
hymns and eternal anthems to the glory of the eternal God. 
the almighty Father of men and angels. 

Holy is our God ; holy is the Almighty: holy is the Im¬ 
mortal : holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and 
earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. Amen. With 
these holy and blessed spirits I also, thy servant, O thou 
gre£.t lover of souls, though I be unworthy to offer praise to 
such a majesty ; yet, out of my bounden duty, humbly offer 
up my heart and voice to join in this blessed choir, and 
confess the glories of the Lord. For thou art holy, and of 
thy greatness there is no end; and in thy justice and good¬ 
ness thou hast measured out to us all thy works. 

Thou madest man out of the earth, and didst form him 
after thine own image : thou didst place him in a garden 
of pleasure, and gavest him laws of righteousness, to be to 
him a seed of immortality. 

“O that men would therefore praise the Lord for his 
goodness, and declare the wonders that he hath done for 
the children of men.” 

For when man sinned and listened to the whispers of a 
tempting spirit, and refused to hear the voice of God, thou 
didst throw him out from Paradise, and sentest him to till 
the earth ; but yet leftest not his condition without remedy, 
but didst provide for him the salvation of a new birth, and, 
by the blood of thy Son, didst redeem and pay the price to 
thine own justice for thine own creature, lest the work of 
thine own hands should perish. 

“ O that men would therefore praise the Lord,” &c. 

For thou, O Lord, in every age didst send testimonies 
from heaven, blessings, and prophets, and fruitful seasons, 
and preachers of righteousness, and miracles of power and 
mercy : thou spakest by thy prophets, and saidst, “ I will 
help by one that is mighty ;” and, in the fulness of time, 
spakest to us by thy Son, by whom thou didst make both 
the worlds, who, by the word of his power, sustains all 
things in heaven and earth; who thought it no robbery to 
be equal to the Father; who, being before all time, was 
pleased to be born in time, to converse with men, to be in¬ 
carnate of a holy Virgin : he emptied himself of all his 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


265 

glories, tqpk on him the form of a servant, in all things be¬ 
ing made like unto us, in a soul of passions and discourse, 
in a body of humility and sorrow, but in all things innocent, 
and in all things afflicted ; and suffered death for us, that we 
by him might live, and be partakers of his nature and his 
glories, of his body and of his Spirit, of the blessings of 
earth, and of immortal felicities in heaven. 

“ O that men would therefore praise the Lord,” &c. 

For thou, O holy and immortal God, O sweetest Saviour 
Jesus, wert made under the law to condemn sin in the 
flesh : thou who knewest no sin, wert made sin for us ; 
thou gavest to us righteous commandments, and madest 
known to us all thy Father’s will : thou didst redeem us 
from our vain conversation, and from the vanity of idols, 
false principles, and foolish confidences, and broughtest us 
to the knowledge of the true and only God and our Father, 
and hast made us to thyself a peculiar people, of thy own 
purchase, a royal priesthood, a holy nation : thou hast 
washed our souls in the laver of regeneration, the sacra¬ 
ment of baptism ; thou hast reconciled us by thy death, 
justified us by thy resurrection, sanctified us by thy Spirit, 
sending him upon thy church in visible forms, and giving 
him in powers, and miracles, and mighty signs, and con¬ 
tinuing this incomparable favour in gifts and sanctifying 
graces, and promising that he shall abide with us for ever : 
thou hast fed us with thine own broken body, and given 
drink to our souls out of thine own heart, and hast ascend¬ 
ed up on high, and hast overcome all the powers of death 
and hell, and redeemed us from the miseries of a sad eter¬ 
nity ; and sittest at the right hand of God, making interces¬ 
sion for us with a never-ceasing charity. 

“ O that men would therefore praise the Lord,” &c. 

The grave could not hold thee long, O holy and eternal 
Jesus; thy body could not see corruption, neither could 
thy soul be left in hell: thou wert free among the dead 
and thou brakest the iron gates of death, and the bars and 
chains of the lower prisons. Thou broughtest comfort tc 
the souls of the patriarchs, who waited for thy coming, 
who longed for the redemption of man, and the revelation 
of thy day. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saw thy day, and 
rejoiced : and when thou didst arise from thy bed of dark¬ 
ness, and leftest the grave-clothes behind thee, and didst 
out on a robe of glory (over which for forty days thou didst 
2 B 


266 


PRAYERS FOR 


wear a veil,) and then enteredst into a cloud, and then into 
glory, then the powers of hell were confounded, then death 
lost its power and was swallowed up into victory; and 
though death is not quite destroyed, yet it is made harm¬ 
less and without a sting, and the condition of human na¬ 
ture is made an entrance to eternal glory ; thou art become 
the prince of life, the first-fruits of the resurrection, the 
first-born from the dead, having made the way plain before 
our faces, that we may also arise again in the resurrection 
of the last day, when thou shalt come again unto us, to 
render to every man according to his works. 

“ O that men would therefore praise the Lord,” &c. 

O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is gracious, and his 
mercy endureth for ever. 

O all ye angels of the Lord, praise ye the Lord; praise 
him and magnify him for ever. 

O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, praise ye the 
Lord ; praise him and magnify him for ever.” 

And now, O Lord God, what shall I render to thy Divine 
Majesty, for all the benefits thou hast done unto thy servant 
in my personal capacity ? 

Thou art my creator and my father, my protector and 
my guardian ; thou hast brought me from my mother’s 
womb ; thou hast told all my joints, and in thy book were 
all my members written ; thou hast given me a comely 
body, Christian and careful parents, holy education; thou 
hast been my guide and my teacher a'tl my days; thou hast 
given me ready faculties, an unloosed tongue, a cheerful 
spirit, straight limbs, a good reputation, and liberty of per¬ 
son, a quiet life, and a tender conscience, [a loving wife or 
husband, and hopeful children.] Thou wert my hope from 
my youth; through thee have I been holden up, ever since 
I was born. Thou hast clothed me and fed me, given me 
friends and blessed them: given me many days of com¬ 
fort and health, free from those sad infirmities, with which 
many of thy saints and dearest servants are afflicted. Thou 
hast sent thy angel to snatch me from the violence of fire 
and water, to prevent precipices, fracture of bones, to res¬ 
cue me from thunder and lightning, plague and pesti¬ 
lential diseases, murder and robbery, violence of chance 
and enemies, and all the spirits of darkness; and in the 
days of sorrow thou hast refreshed me ; in the destitu¬ 
tion of provisions thou hast taken care of me, and thou 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


267 

hast said unto me, “ I will never leave thee, nor forsake 
thee.” 

“ I will give thanks unto the Lord with my whole heart, 
secretly among the faithful, and in the congregation.” 

“Thou, O my dearest Lord and Father, hast taken care 
of my soul, hast pitied my miseries, sustained my infirmi¬ 
ties relieved and instructed my ignorances : and though I 
have broken thy righteous laws and commandments, run 
passionately after vanities, and was in love with death, and 
was dead in sin, and was exposed to thousands of tempta¬ 
tions, and fell foully, and continued in it, and loved to have 
it so, and hated to be reformed; yet thou didst call me with 
the checks of conscience, with daily sermons and precepts 
of holiness, with fear and shame, with benefits and the ad¬ 
monitions of thy most Holy Spirit, by the counsel of my 
friends, by the example of good persons, with holy books 
and thousands of excellent arts, and wouldst not suffer me 
to perish in my folly, but didst force me to attend to thy 
gracious calling, and hast put me into a state of repentance, 
and possibilities of pardon, being infinitely desirous I should 
live, and recover, and make use of thy grace, and partake 
of thy glories. 

“ I will give thanks unto the Lord with my whole heart, 
secretly among the faithful, and in the congregation. For 
salvation belongeth unto the Lord, and thy blessing is upon 
thy servant. But as for me, I will come into thy house in 
the multitude of thy mercies, and in thy fear will I worship 
toward thy holy temple. For of thee, and in thee, and 
through and for thee, are all things. Blessed be the name 
ff God, from generation to generation.” Amen. 

1 short Form of Thanksgiving , to he said upon any 
special Deliverance , as from Childbirth , from sickness , 
from Battle, or imminent Danger at sea or Land , <Spc. 

O most merciful and gracious God, thou fountain of all 
#>ercy and blessing, thou hast opened the hand of thy 
mercy to fill me with blessings, and the sweet effects of thy 
loving kindness: thou feedest us like a shepherd, thou 
governest us as a king, thou bearest us in thy arms like a 
nurse, thou dost cover us under the shadow of thy wings, 
and shelter us like a hen : thou (O dearest Lord) ivakest 
for us as a watchman, thou providest for us like a husband, 
thou lovest us as a friend, and thinkest on us perpetually, 


268 


PRAYERS FOR 


as a careful mother on her helpless babe, and art exceed¬ 
ing 1 merciful to all that fear thee. And now, O L*rd thou 
hast added this great blessing of deliverance from my late 
danger [here name the blessing ;] it was thy hand and the 
help of thy mercy that relieved me ; the waters of affliction 
had drowned me, and the stream had gone over my soul, 
if the Spirit of the Lord had not moved upon these waters. 
Thou, O Lord, didst revoke thy angry sentence, which I 
had deserved, and which was gone out against me. Unto 
thee, O Lord, I ascribe the praise and honour of my re¬ 
demption.' I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy, for 
thou hast considered my trouble, and hast known my soul 
in adversity. As thou hast spread thy hand upon me for 
a covering, so also enlarge my heart with thankfulness, 
and fill my mouth with praises, that my duty and returns 
to thee may be great as my needs of mercy are; and let 
thy gracious favours and loving kindness endure for ever 
and ever upon thy servant; and grant that what thou hast 
sown in mercy may spring up in duty ; and let thy grace 
so strengthen my purposes, that I may sin no more, lest 
thy threatening return upon me in anger, and thy anger 
break me into pieces; but let me walk in the light of thy 
favour, and in the paths of thy commandments; that I, 
living here to the glory of thy name, may at last enter into 
the glory of my Lord, to spend a whole eternity in giving 
praise to thy exalted and ever-glorious name. Amen. 

“We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be 
the Lord. All the earth doth worship thee, the Father 
everlasting. To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and 
all the powers therein. To thee cherubim and seraphim 
continually do cry, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth ; 
heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. The 
glorious company of the apostles praise thee. The goodly 
fellowship of the prophets praise thee. The noble army 
of martyrs praise thee. The holy church throughout all 
the world doth acknowledge thee, the Father of an infinite 
majesty ; thine honourable, true, and only Son ; also the 
Holy Ghost, the comforter. Thou art the king of glory, 
O Christ: thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. 
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst 
not abhor the Virgin’s womb. When thou hadst overcome 
the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of 
heaven to all believers. Thou sittest at the right hand of 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


269 

G*d in .he glory of the Father. We believe that thou 
shalt come to be our judge. We therefore pray thee, help 
thy servants, whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious 
blood. Make them to be numbered with thy saints in 
glory everlasting. O Lord, save thy people, and bless 
thine heritage. Govern them, and lift them up for ever. 
Day by day we magnify thee, and we worship thy name 
ever world without end. Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us 
this day without sin. O Lord, have mercy upon us, have 
mercy upon us. O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us, 
as our trust is in thee. O Lord, in thee have I trusted : 
let me never be confounded.” Amen. 

A Prayer of Thanksgiving after the receiving of some great 
Blessing , as the birth of an Heir , the success of an honest 
Design , a Victory , a good Harvest , <fyc. 

O Lord God, father of mercies, the fountain of comfort 
and blessing, of life and peace, of plenty and pardon, who 
fillest heaven with thy glory, and earth with thy goodness ; 
I give thee the most earnest, the most humble, and most en¬ 
larged returns of my glad and thankful heart, for thou hast 
refreshed me with thy comforts, and enlarged me with thy 
blessing: thou hast made my flesh and my bones to re¬ 
joice : for besides the blessings of all mankind, the blessings 
of nature, and the blessings of grace, the support of every 
minute, and the comforts of every day, thou hast opened 
thy bosom, and at this time hast poured out an excellent 
expression of thy loving kindness—[ here name the blessing. ] 
What am I, O Lord, and what is my father’s house, what 
is the life and what are the capacities of thy servant, that 
thou shouldst do this unto me ,* that the great God of 
men and angels should make a special decree in heaven 
for me, and send out an angel of blessing, and instead of 
condemning and ruining me, as I miserably have deserved, 
to distinguish me from many my equals and my betters, by 
this and many other special acts of grace and favour 1 
Praised be the Lord daily, even the Lord, that helpeth 
us, and poureth his benefits upon us. He is our God, even 
the (#od of whom cometh salvation : God is the Lord, by 
whom we escape death. Thou hast brought me to great 
honour, and comforted me on every side. 

Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy works ; I 
will rejoice in giving praise for the operation of thy hands. 

2 b 2 


270 


PRAYERS FOR 


O give thanks unto the Lord, and call upon his name: 
tell the people, what things he hath done. 

As for me, I will give great thanks unto the Lord, and 
praise him among the multitude. 

Blessed be the Lord God, even the Lord God of Israel, 
which only doth wondrous and gracious things. 

And blessed be the name of his Majesty for ever; and all 
the earth shall be filled with his majesty. Amen. Amen. 

Glory be to the Father, &c. 

As it was in the beginning, &c. 

A Prayer to be said on the Feast of Christmas , or the Birth 
of our blessed Saviour Jesus: the same also may be said 
upon the Feast of the Annunciation and Purification of the 
blessed Virgin Mary. 

O holy and almighty God, Father of mercies, Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of thy love and eternal mer¬ 
cies, I adore, and praise, and glorify thy infinite and un¬ 
speakable love and wisdom, who has sent thy Son from 
the bosom of felicities to take upon him our nature, and 
our misery, and our guilt; and hast made the Son of God 
to become the son of man, that we might become the sons 
of God, and partakers of the Divine nature; since thou 
hast so exalted human nature, be pleased also to sanctify 
my person, that, by a conformity to the humility and laws, 
and sufferings of my dearest Saviour, I may be united to 
his Spirit, and be made all one with the most holy Jesus. 
Amen. 

O holy and eternal Jesus, who didst pity mankind lying 
in his blood and sin and misery, and didst choose our sad¬ 
nesses and sorrows, that thou mightest make us to partake 
of thy felicities; let thine eyes pity me, thy hands support 
me, thy holy feet tread down all the difficulties in my way 
to heaven; let me dwell in thy heart, be instructed with 
thy wisdom, moved by thy affections, choose with thy 
will, and be clothed with thy righteousness ; that, in the 
day of judgment, I may be found having on thy garments 
sealed with thy impression; and that, bearing upon every 
faculty and member the character of my elder bfcther 
I may not be cast out with strangers and unbelievers. 
Amen. 

O holy and ever-blessed Spirit, who didst overshadow 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


271 

the holy Virgin Mother of our Lord, and causedst her to 
conceive by a miraculous and mysterious manner; be 
pleased to overshadow my soul, and enlighten my spirit, 
that I may conceive the holy Jesus in my heart, and may 
bear him in my mind, and may grow up to the fulness of 
the stature of Christ, to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. 
Amen. 

To God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the 
eternal Son that was incarnate and bbrn of a Virgin, to 
the Spirit of the Father and the Son be all honour and 
glory, worship and adoration, now and for ever. Amen. 

The same Form of Prayer may be used upon our own 

birth-day, or day of our baptism : adding the following 

prayer. 

A Prayer to be said upon our Birth-day , or day of Baptism. 

O blessed and eternal God, I give thee praise and glory 
for thy great mercy to me, in causing me to be born of 
Christian parents, and didst not allot to me a portion with 
misbelievers and heathen that have not known thee. 
Thou didst not suffer me to be strangled at the gate of 
the womb, but thy hand sustained and brought me to the 
light of the world, and the illumination of baptism, with 
thy grace preventing my election, and by an artificial ne¬ 
cessity and holy prevention engaging me to the profession 
and practices of Christianity. Lord, since that, I have 
broken the promises made in my behalf, and which I con¬ 
firmed by my after-act; I went back from them by an evil 
life : and yet thou hast still continued to me life and time 
of repentance ; and didst not cut me off in the beginning of 
my days, and the progress of my sins. O dearest God, 
pardon the errors and ignorances, the vices and vanities of 
my youth and the faults of my more forward years, and 
let me never more stain the whiteness of my baptismal robe: 
and now that by thy grace I still persist in the purposes of 
obedience, and do give up my name to Christ, and glory 
to be a disciple of thy institution, and a servant of Jesus, 
let me never fail of thy grace ; let no root of bitterness 
spring up, and disorder my purposes, and defile my spirit. 
O let my years be so many degrees of nearer approach to 
thee: and forsake me not, O God in my old age, when I 
am gray-headed; and when my strength faileth me, be 
thou my strength and my guide until death; that I may 


PRAYERS FOR 


272 

reckon my years, and apply my heart unto wisdom; and 
at last, after the spending a holy and a blessed life, I may 
be brought unto a glorious eternity, through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. Amen. 

Then add the Form of Thanksgiving formerly described. 

A Prayer to be said upon the days of the Memory 
of Apostles , Martyrs , Spc. 

O eternal God, to whom do live the spirits of them that 
depart hence in the Lord, and in whom the souls of them 
that be elected, after they be delivered from the burden of 
the flesh, be in peace and rest from their labours, and their 
works follow them, and their memory is blessed; I bless 
and magnify thy holy and ever-glorious name, for Uie 
great grace and blessing manifested to thy apostles and 
martyrs, and other holy persons, who have glorified thy 
name in the days of their flesh, and have served the interest 
of religion and of thy servant \name the apostle or mar¬ 
tyr *, <^c.] in remembrance, whom thou hast led through 
the troubles and temptations of this world, and now hast 
lodged in the bosom of a certain hope and great beati¬ 
tude, until the day of restitution of all things. Blessed 
be the mercy and eternal goodness of God ,* and the me¬ 
mory of all thy saints is blessed. Teach me to practise 
their doctrine, to imitate their lives, following their ex¬ 
ample, and being united as a part of the same mystical 
body by the band of the same faith, and a holy hope, and 
a never-ceasing charity. And may it please thee, of thy 
gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of 
thine elect, and to hasten thy kingdom, that we, with thy 
servant [name and all others departed in the true faith 
and fear of thy holy name, may have our perfect consumma¬ 
tion and bliss, in body and soul, in thy eternal and ever¬ 
lasting kingdom. Amen. 

A form of Prayer recording all the Parts and Mysteries of 
Christ's Passion , being a short History of it: to be used 
especially in the week of the Passion , and before the re¬ 
ceiving the Blessed Sacrament . 

All praise, honour, and glory, be to the holy and 
eternal Jesus. I adore thee, O blessed Redeemer, eternal 
God, the light of the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel; for 
thou hast done and suffered for me more than I could 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


273 

wish : more, than I could think of; even all that a lost and 
a miserable perishing sinner could need. 

Thou wert afflicted with thirst and hunger, with heat and 
cold, with labours and sorrows, with hard journeys and rest¬ 
less nights; and when thou wert contriving all the myste¬ 
rious and admirable ways of paying our scores, thou didst 
suffer thyself to be designed to slaughter by those for whom 
in love thou wert ready to die. 

“ What is man, that thou art mindful of him ; and the son 
of man, that thou visitest him]” 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus ; for thou wentest 
about doing good, working miracles of mercy, healing the 
sick, comforting the distressed, instructing the ignorant, 
raising the dead, enlightening the blind, strengthening the 
lame, straightening the crooked, relieving the poor, preach¬ 
ing the gospel, and reconciling sinners by the mightiness 
of thy power, by the wisdom of thy Spirit, by the word of 
God, and the merits of thy passion, thy healthful and bitter 
passion. 

“ Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him,” &c. 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, who wert content 
to be conspired against by the Jews, to be sold by thy ser¬ 
vant for a vile price, and to wash the feet of them that took 
money for-thy life, and to give to him and to all the apos¬ 
tles thy most holy body and blood, to become a sacrifice 
for their sins, even for their betraying and denying thee; 
and for all my sins, even for my crucifying thee afresh, 
and for such sins, which I am ashamed to think, but 
that the greatness of my sins, magnify the infiniteness 
of thy mercies, who didst so great things for so vile a 
person. 

“ Lord, what is man,” &c. 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, who, being to depart 
the world, didst comfort thy apostles, pouring out into their 
ears and hearts/ treasures of admirable discourses; who 
didst recommend them to thy Father with a mighty charity, 
and then didst enter into the garden set with nothing but 
briers and sorrows, where thou didst suffer a most unspeak¬ 
able agony, until the sweat strained through thy pure skin 
like drops of blood, and there didst sigh and groan, and 
fall flat upon the earth, and pray, and submit to the intoler¬ 
able burden of thy Father’s wrath, which I had deserved, 
and thou sufferedst. 


274 


PRAYERS FOR 


u Lord, what is man,” &c. 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, who hast sanctified 
to us all our natural infirmities and passions, by vouch¬ 
safing to be in fear and trembling and sore amazement, by 
being bound and imprisoned, by being harassed and dragged 
with cords of violence and rude hands, by being drenched 
in the brook in the way, by being sought after like a thief, 
and used like a sinner, who wert the most holy and the most 
innocent, cleaner than an angel, and brighter than the 
morning star. 

“ Lord, what is man,” &c. 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be thy 
loving kindness and pity, by which thou didst neglect thy 
own sorrows, and go to comfort the sadness of thy disciples, 
quickening their dulness, encouraging their duty, arming 
their weakness with excellent precepts against the day 
of trial. Blessed be that humility and sorrow of thine, 
who, being Lord of the angels, yet wouldst need and re¬ 
ceive comfort from thy servant the angel; who didst offer 
thyself to thy persecutors, and madest them able to seize 
thee; and didst receive the traitor’s kiss, and sufferedst a 
vail to be thrown over thy holy face, that thy enemies might 
not presently be confounded by so bright a lustre; and 
wouldst do a miracle to cure a wound of one of thy spiteful 
enemies ; and didst reprove a zealous servant in behalf of a 
malicious adversary ; and then didst go like a lamb to the 
slaughter, without noise or violence or resistance, when 
thou couldst have commanded millions of angels for thy 
guard and rescue. 

“ Lord, what is man,” &c. 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be that 
holy sorrow thou didst suffer, when thy disciples fled, and 
thou wert left alone in the hands of cruel men, who, like 
evening wolves, thirsted for a draught of thy best blood: 
and thou wert led to the house of Annas, and there asked 
ensnaring questions, and smitten on the face by him, whose 
ear thou hadst but lately healed; and from thence wert 
dragged to the house of Caiaphas ; and there all night didst 
endure, spittings, affronts, scorn, contumelies, blows, and 
intolerable insolences; and all this for man, who was thy 
enemy, and the cause of all thy sorrows. 

“ Lord, what is man,” &c. 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be thy 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


275 


mercy, who, when thy servant Peter denied thee and forsook 
thee and forswore thee, didst look back upon him, and, by 
that gracious and chiding look, didst call him back to him¬ 
self and thee; who wert accused before the high-priest, 
and railed upon, and examined to evil purposes, and with 
designs of blood ; who wert declared guilty of death for 
speaking a most necessary and most profitable truth; who 
wert sent to Pilate and found innocent, and sent to Herod 
and still found innocent, and wert arrayed in white, both 
to declare thy innocence, and yet to deride thy person, and 
wert sent back to Pilate and examined again, and yet no¬ 
thing but innocence found in thee, and malice round about 
thee to devour thy life, which yet thou wert more desirous 
to lay down for them, than they were to take it from thee. 

“ Lord, what is man,” &c. 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed be that 
patience and charity, by which for our sakes thou wert 
content to be smitten with canes, and have that holy face, 
which angels with joy and wonder do behold, be spit upon, 
and be despised, when compared with Barabbas, and 
scourged most rudely with unhallowed hands, till the pave¬ 
ment was purpled with that holy blood, and condemned to a 
sad and shameful, a public and painful death, and arrayed in 
scarlet, and crowned with thorns, and stripped naked, and 
then clothed, and loaden with the cross, and tormented 
with a tablet stuck with nails at the fringes of thy garment, 
and bound hard with cords, and dragged most vilely and 
most piteously, till the load was too great, and did sink 
thy tender and virginal body to the earth: and yet didst 
comfort the weeping women, and didst more pity thy perse¬ 
cutors than thyself, and wert grieved for the miseries of 
Jerusalem to come forty years after, more than for thy pre¬ 
sent passion. 

“ Lord, what is man,” &c. 

Blessed be thy name, O holy Jesus, and blessed oe that 
incomparable sweetness and holy sorrow, which thou suf- 
feredst, when thy holy hands and feet were nailed upon 
the cross, and the cross, being set in a hollowness of the 
earth did in the fall rend the wounds wider, and there, 
naked and bleeding, sick and faint, wounded and despised, 
didst hang upon the weight of thy wounds three long hours, 
praying for thy persecutors, satisfying thy Father’s wrath, 
reconciling the penitent thief, providing for thy holy and 


276 


PRAYERS FOR 


afflicted mother, tasting vinegar and gall; and when the 
fulness of thy suffering was accomplished, didst give thy 
soul into the hands of God, and didst descend to the re¬ 
gions of longing souls, who waited for the revelation of 
this thy day in their prisons of hope: and then thy body 
was transfixed with a spear, and issued forth two sacraments, 
water and blood ; and thy body was composed to burial, 
and dwelt in darkness three days and three nights. 

“ Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him; and 
the son of man, that thou thus visitest him'?” 

The Prayer. 

Thus, O blessed Jesu, thou didst finish thy holy passion 
with pain and anguish so great, that nothing could be 
greater than it, except thyself and thy own infinite mercy : 
and all this for man, even for me, than whom nothing 
could be more miserable, thyself only excepted, who be- 
camest so by undertaking our guilt and our punishment. 
And now, Lord, who hast done so much for me, be pleased 
only to make it effectual to me, that it may not be useless 
and lost as to my particular, lest I become eternally mise¬ 
rable, and lost to all hopes and possibilities of comfort. 
All this deserves more love than 1 have to give : but, Lord, 
do thou turn me ail into love, and all my love into obedience, 
and let my obedience be without interruption, and then, I 
hope, thou wilt accept such a return as I can make. Make 
me to be something that thou delightest in, and thou shalt 
have all that I am or have from thee, even whatsoever thou 
makest fit for thyself. Teach me to live wdiolly for my 
Saviour Jesus, and to be ready to die for Jesus, and to be 
conformable to his life and sufferings, and to be united to 
him by inseparable unions, and to own no passions, but what 
may be servants to Jesus, and disciples of his institution. 
O sweetest Saviour, clothe my soul with thy holy robe; 
hide my sins in thy wounds, and bury them in thy grave ; 
and let me rise in the life of grace, and abide and grow 
in it till I arrive at the kingdom of glory. Amen. 

“ Our father,” &c. 

[Ad Sect. 7, 8.] A form of Prayer or Intercession for all 
Estates of People in the Christian Church. The parts of 
which may he added to any other forms ; and the whole office. 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


277 

entirely as it lies, is proper to be said in our preparation to 

the Holy Sacrament, or on the day of celebration . 

1. For Ourselves . 

O thou gracious Father of mercy, Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, have mercy upon thy servants, who bow our 
heads, and our knees, and our hearts to thee: pardon and 
forgive us all our sins : give us the grace of holy repentance, 
and a strict obedience to thy holy word: strengthen us in 
the inner man with the power of the Holy Ghost for all the 
parts and duties of our calling and holy living: preserve 
us for ever in the unity of the holy catholic church, and in 
the integrity of the Christian faith, and in the love of God 
and of our neighbours, and in the hope of life eternal. Amen. 

2. For the whole Catholic Church . 

O holy Jesus, king of the saints, and prince of the catho¬ 
lic church, preserve thy spouse, whom thou hast purchased 
with thy right hand, and redeemed and cleansed with thy 
blood; the whole catholic church from one end of the earth 
to the other; she is founded upon a rock, but planted in 
the sea. O preserve her safe from schism, heresy, and 
sacrilege. Unite all her members with the bands of faith, 
hope, and charity, and an external communion, when it 
shall seem good in thine eyes. Let the daily sacrifice of 
prayer and sacramental thanksgiving never cease, but be 
for ever presented to thee, and for ever united to the inter¬ 
cession of her dearest Lord, and for ever prevail for the 
obtaining for every of its members grace and blessing, par¬ 
don and salvation. Amen. 

3. For all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors. 

O King of kings, and Prince of all the rulers of the 
earth, give thy grace and Spirit to all Christian princes, 
the spirit of wisdom and counsel, the spirit of government 
and godly fear. Grant unto them to live in peace and ho¬ 
nour, that their people may love and fear them, and they 
may love and fear God. Speak good unto their hearts 
concerning the church, that they may be nursing fathers 
to it, fathers to the fatherless, judges and avengers of the 
cause of widows: that they may be compassionate to the 
wants of the poor, and the groans of the oppressed; that 
they may not vex or kill the Lord’s people with unjust or 
ambitious wars, but may feed the flock of God, and may 


278 


PRAYERS FOR 


inquire after and do all things, which may promote peace 
public honesty, and holy religion; so administering things 
present, that they may not fail of the everlasting glories 
of A he , world to come, where all thy faithful people shall 
reign kings for ever. Amen. 

4. For all the Orders of them that Minister about 

Holy Things. 

O thou great shepherd and bishop of our souls, holy and 
eternal Jesus, give unto thy servants, the ministers of the 
mysteries of Christian religion, the spirit of prudence and 
sanctity, faith and charity, confidence and zeal, diligence 
and watchfulness, that they may declare thy will unto the 
people faithfully, and dispense thy sacraments rightly, and 
intercede with thee graciously and acceptably for thy ser¬ 
vants. Grant, O Lord, that by a holy life and a true belief, 
by well doing and patient suffering (when thbu shalt call 
them to it,) they may glorify thee the great lover of souls, 
and after a plentiful conversion of sinners from the error 
of their ways, they may shine like the stars in glory. 
Amen. 

Give unto thy servants, the bishops, a discerning spirit, 
that they may lay hands suddenly on no man, but may 
depute such persons to the ministries of religion, who may 
adorn the gospel of God, and whose lips may preserve 
knowledge, and such who by their good preaching and 
holy living may advance the service of the Lord Jesus. 
Amen. 

5. For our nearest Relatives , as Husband , Wife , 

Children , Family , <fyc. 

O God of infinite mercy, let thy loving mercy and com¬ 
passion descend upon the head of thy servants, [my wife, 
or husband , children , and family :] be pleased to give them 
health of body and of spirit, a competent portion of tem¬ 
porals, so as may with comfort support them in their 
journey to heaven: preserve them from all evil and sad 
accidents, defend them in all assaults of their enemies, di¬ 
rect, their persons and their actions, sanctify their-hearts, 
and words, and purposes; that we all may, by the bands 
of obedience and charity, be united to our Lord Jesus, and 
always feeling thee our merciful and gracious father, may 
become a holy family, discharging our whole duty in all 
our relations; that we in this life being thv children by 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


279 


adoption and grace, may be admitted into thy holy family 
hereafter, for ever to sing praises to thee in the church 
of the first-born, in the family of thy redeemed ones. 
Amen. 

6. For our Parents , our Kindred in the Flesh, our Friends 

and Benefactors. 

O God, merciful and gracious, who hast made [my 
parents,] my friends and my benefactors ministers of thy 
mercy and instruments of providence to thy servant, I 
humbly beg a blessing to descend upon the heads of [name 
the persons, or the relations .] Depute thy holy angels to 
guard their persons, thy Holy Spirit to guide their souls, 
thy providence to minister to their necessities; and let thy 
grace and mercy preserve them from the bitter pains of 
eternal death, and bring them to everlasting life, through 
Jesus Christ. Amen. 

7. For all that lie under the Rod of War, Famine, Pestilence: 

to be said in the time of Plague, or War, fyc. 

O Lord God Almighty, thou art our Father, we are thy 
children : thou art our Redeemer, we thy people purchased 
with the price of thy most precious blood : be pleased to 
moderate thy anger towards thy servants ; let not thy whole 
displeasure arise, lest we be consumed and brought to no¬ 
thing. Let health and peace be within our dwellings: let 
righteousness and holiness dwell for ever in our hearts, 
and be expressed in all our actions, and the light of thy 
countenance be upon us in all our sufferings, that we may 
delight in the service and in the mercies of God for ever. 
Amen. 

O gracious Father and merciful God, if it be thy will, 
say unto the destroying angel, “ it is enough and though 
we are not better than our brethern, who are smitten 
with the rod of God, but much worse, yet may it please 
thee, even because thou art good, and because we are ti¬ 
morous and sinful, not yet fitted for our appearance, to set 
thy mark upon our foreheads, that thy angel, the minister 
of thy justice, may pass over us and hurt us not: let thy 
hand cover thy servants and hide us in the clefts of the 
rock, in the wounds of the holy Jesus, from the present 
anger that is gone out against us; that though we walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, we may fear no 
evil and suffer none: and those, whom thou hast smitten 


PRAYERS FOR 


280 

with thv rod, support with thy staff, and visit them with thy 
mercies and salvation, through Jesus Christ. Amen. 

8. For all Women with Child , and for unborn Children- 

O Lord God, who art the father of them that trust in 

thee, and showest mercy to a thousand generations of them 
that fear thee; have mercy upon all women great with 
child, be pleased to give them a joyful and safe deliver¬ 
ance : and let thy grace preserve the fruit of their wombs, 
and conduct them to the holy sacrament of baptism; that 
they, being regenerated by thy spirit, and adopted into thy 
family, and the portion and duty of sons, may live to the 
glory of God, to the comfort of their parents and friends, 
to the edification of the Christian commonwealth, and the 
salvation of their own souls, through Jesus Christ. Amen. 

9. For all Estates of Men and Women , in the Christian 

Church . 

O holy God, king eternal, out of the infinite store¬ 
houses of thy grace and mercy, give unto all virgins chas¬ 
tity, and a religious spirit: to all persons dedicated to 
thee and to religion, continence and meekness, an active 
zeal and an unwearied spirit; to all married pairs, faith 
and holiness; to widows and fatherless, and all that are op¬ 
pressed, thy patronage, comfort, and defence; to all Chris¬ 
tian women, simplicity and modesty, humility and chastity, 
patience and charity ; give unto the poor, to all that are 
robbed and spoiled of their goods, a competent support, 
and a contented spirit, and a treasure in heaven hereafter: 
give unto prisoners and captives, to them that toil in the 
mines, and row in the gallies, strength of body and of spirit, 
liberty and redemption, comfort and restitution : to all that 
travel by land, thy angel for their guide, and a holy and 
prosperous return: to all that travel by sea, freedom from 
pirates and shipwreck, and bring them to the haven where 
they would be; to distressed and scrupulous consciences, 
to melancholy and disconsolate persons, to all that are 
afflicted with evil and unclean spirits, give a light from 
heaven, great grace and proportionable comforts, and 
timely deliverance; give them patience and resignation; 
let their sorrows be changed into grace and comfort, and 
let the storm waft them certainly to the regions of rest and 
glory. 

Lord God of mercy, give to thy martyrs, confessors, and 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


28] 

all thy persecuted, constancy and prudence, boldness and 
hope, a full faith and a never-failing charity. To all whc 
are condemned to death, do thou ministe* comfort, a strong 
a quiet, and a resigned spirit : take from them the fear of 
death, and all remaining affections to sin, and all imperfec 
tions of duty, and cause them to die full of grace, full of 
hope. And give to all faithful, and particularly to them 
who have recommended themselves to the prayers of thy 
unworthy servant, a supply of all their needs temporal and 
spiritual, and according to their several states and necessi¬ 
ties, rest and peace, pardon and refreshment: and show us 
all a mercy in the day of judgment. Amen. 

Give, O Lord, to the magistrates equity, sincerity, cou¬ 
rage, and prudence, that they may protect the good, de 
fend religion, and punish the wrong doers. Give to the 
nobility wisdom, valour, and loyalty : to merchants, justice 
and faithfulness : to all artificers and labourers, truth 
and honesty: to our enemies, forgiveness and brotherly 
kindness. 

Preserve to us the heavens and the air in healthful in¬ 
fluence and disposition, the earth in plenty, the kingdom 
in peace and good government, our marriages in peace, 
and sweetness, and innocence of society, thy people from 
famine and pestilence, our houses from burning and rob¬ 
bery, our persons from being burnt alive : from banishment 
and prison, from widowhood and destitution, from violence 
of pains and passion, from tempests and earthquakes, from 
inundation of waters, from rebellion or invasion, from im¬ 
patience and inordinate cares, from tediousness of spirit and 
despair, from murder, and all violent, accursed, and unusual 
deaths, from the surprise of sudden and violent accidents, 
from passionate and unreasonable fears, from all thy wrath, 
and from all our sins, good Lord, deliver and preserve thy 
servants for ever. Amen. 

Repress the violence of all implacable, warring, and 
tyrant nations : bring home unto thy fold all that are gone 
astray: call into the church all strangers ; increase the 
number and holiness of thine own people : bring infants to 
ripeness of age and reason: confirm all baptized people 
with thy grace and with thy Spirit: instruct the novices 
and new Christians: let a great grace and merciful pro¬ 
vidence bring youthful persons safely and holily through 
the indiscretions, and passions, and temptations of their 

2 c 2 


282 


PRAYERS FOR 


younger years : and to those whom thou hast or shalt permi 
to live to the age of a man, give competent strength and 
wisdom; take from them covetousness and churlishness, 
pride and impatience ; fill them full of devotion and charity, 
repentance and sobriety, holy thoughts and longing desires 
after heaven and heavenly things ; give them a holy and a 
blessed death, and to us all a joyful resurrection through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Ad Sect. 10.] The manner of using these Devotions byway 

of preparation to the receiving the Blessed Sacrament of 

the Lord's Supper. 

The just preparation to this holy feast consisting princi¬ 
pally in a holy life, and consequently in the repetition of 
the acts of all virtues, and especially of faith, repentance, 
charity, and thanksgiving: to the exercise of these four 
graces, let the person, that intends to communicate, in the 
time set apart for his preparation and devotion, for the ex¬ 
ercise of his faith, recite the prayer or litany of the passion ; 
for the exercise of repentance, the form of confession of 
sins with the prayer annexed; and for the graces of thanks¬ 
giving and charity, let him use the special forms of prayer 
above described. Or if a less time can be allotted for pre¬ 
paratory devotion, the two first will be the more proper, as 
containing in them all the personal duty of the communi¬ 
cant. To which, upon the morning of that holy solemnity, 
let him add 

A Prayer of Preparation or Address to the Holy Sacra¬ 
ment. An Act of Love. 

O most gracious and eternal God, the helper of the help¬ 
less, the comforter of the comfortless, the hope of the af¬ 
flicted, the bread of the hungry, the drink of the thirsty, 
and the Saviour of all them that wait upon thee; I bless 
and glorify thy name, and adore thy goodness, and delight 
in thy love, that thou hast once more given me the oppor¬ 
tunity of receiving the greatest favour which I can receive 
in this world, even the body and blood of my dearest Sa¬ 
viour. O take from me all affection to sin or vanity; let 
not my affections dwell below, but soar upwards to the ele¬ 
ment of love, to the seat of God, to the regions of glory, and 
the inheritance of Jesus : that I may hunger and thirst for 
the bread of life, and the wine of elect souls, and may know 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


283 

no loves but the love of God, and the most merciful Jesus. 
Amen. 

An Act of Desire, 

O blessed Jesus, thou hast used many arts to save me, 
thou hast given thy life to redeem me, thy Holy Spirit to 
sanctify me, thyself for my example, thy word for my rule, 
thy grace for my guide, the fruit of thy body hanging on 
the tree of the cross for the sin of my soul; and after all 
this, thou hast sent thy apostles and ministers of salvation 
to call me, to importune me, to constrain me to holiness, 
and peace, and felicity. O now come, Lord Jesus, come 
quickly: my heart is desirous of thy presence, and thirsty 
of thy grace, and would fain entertain thee, not as a guest, 
but as an inhabitant, as the Lord of all my faculties. En¬ 
ter in and take possession, and dwell with me for ever; 
that I also may dwell in the heart of my dearest Lord, 
which was opened for me with a spear and love. 

An Act of Contrition, 

Lord, thou shalt find my heart full of cares and worldly 
desires, cheated with love of riches, and neglect of holy 
things, proud and unmortified, false and crafty to deceive 
itself, intricated and entangled with difficult cases of con¬ 
science, with knots which my own wildness, and inconsi¬ 
deration, and impatience, have tied and shuffled together. 
O my dearest Lord, if thou canst behold such an impure 
seat, behold the place, to which thou art invited, is full 
of passion and prejudice, evil principles and evil habits, 
peevish and disobedient, lustful and intemperate, and full of 
sad remembrances, that I have often provoked to jealousy 
and to anger thee my God, my dearest Saviour, him that 
died for me, him that suffered torments for me, that is in¬ 
finitely good to me, and infinitely good and perfect in him¬ 
self. This, O dearest Saviour, is a sad truth, and I am 
heartily ashamed, and truly sorrowful for it, and do deeply 
hate all my sins, and am full of indignation against myself 
for so unworthy, so careless, so continued, so great a folly 
and humbly beg of thee to increase my sorrow, and my 
care, and my hatred, against sin ; and make my love to 
thee swell' up to a great grace, and then to glory and im 
mensity. 


284 


PRAYERS FOR 


An Act of Faith. 

This indeed, is my condition; but I know, O blessed 
Jesus, that thou didst take upon thee my nature, that thou 
mightest suffer for my sins, and thou didst suffer to deliver 
me from them and from thy Father’s wrath: and I was 
delivered from this wrath, that I might serve thee in holi¬ 
ness and righteousness all my days. Lord, I am as sure 
thou didst the great work of redemption for me and all 
mankind, as that I am alive. This is my hope, the strength 
of my spirit, my joy and my confidence : and do thou 
never let the spirit of unbelief enter into me and take me 
from this rock. Here I will dwell, for I have delight there¬ 
in : here I will live, and here I desire to die. 

The Petition. 

Therefore, O blessed Jesu, who art my Saviour and my 
God, whose body is my food, and thy righteousness is my 
robe, thou art the priest and the sacrifice, the master of 
the feast and the feast itself, the physician of my soul, the 
light of mine eyes, the purifier of my stains : enter into my 
heart, and cast out from thence all impurities, all the re¬ 
mains of the old man ; and grant I may partake of this 
holy sacrament with much reverence, and holy relish, and 
great effect, receiving hence the communication of thy holy 
body and blood, for the establishment of an unreprovable 
faith, of an unfeigned love, for the fulness of wisdom, for 
the healing my soul, for the blessing and preservation of 
my body, for the taking out of the sting of temporal death, 
and for the assurance of a holy resurrection, for the ejection 
of all evil from within me, and the fulfilling all thy righte¬ 
ous commandments, and to procure for me a mercy and a 
fair reception at the day of judgment, through thy mercies, 
O holy and ever-blessed Saviour Jesus. Amen. 

[Here also may be added the prayer after receiving the 
cup.] 

Ejaculations to he said before, or, at the Receiving the 

Holy Sacrament. 

Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks: so longeth 
my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, 
even for the living God : when shall I come before the 
presence of God? Psalm xlii. 1, 2. 

O Lord my God, great are thy wondrous works which 
thou hast done; like as be also thy thoughts, which are to 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


285 

usward: and yet there is no man, that ordereth them unto 
thee. Psal. xl. 6. 

O send out thy light and thy truth, that they may lead 
me and bring me unto thy holy hill and to thy dwelling: 
and that I may go unto the altar of God, even unto the God 
of my joy and gladness: and with my heart will I give 
thanks to thee, O God my God. Psal. xfiii. 3, 4. 

I will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord; and sc 
will I go to thine altar: that I may show the voice of 
thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works. Psalm 
xxvi. 6, 7. 

Examine me, O Lord, and prove me ; try thou my reins 
and my heart. For thy loving kindness is now and ever 
before my eyes : and I will walk in thy truth, ver. 2, 3. 

Thou shalt prepare a table before me against them that 
trouble me: thou hast anointed mine head with oil, and my 
cup shall be full. But thy loving-kindness and mercy shall 
follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the 
house of the Lord for ever. Psal. xxiii. 5, 6. 

This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a 
man may eat thereof and not die. John vi. 50. 

Whoso eateth jny flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth 
in me and I in him, and hath eternal life abiding in him, 
and I will raise him up at the last day. ver. 54. 56. 

Lord, whither shall we go but to thee ? thou hast the 
words of eternal life. John vi. 68. 

If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. 
John vii. 37. 

The bread which we break, is it not the communication 
of the body of Christ ? and the cup which we drink, is it 
not the communication of the blood of Christ ? 1 Cor. x. 16. 

What are those wounds in thy hands? They are those 
with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. 
Zech. xiii. 6. 

Immediately before the receiving , say , 

Lord, I am not worthy, that thou shouldst enter under 
my roof. But do thou speak the word only, and thy ser¬ 
vant shall be healed. Matt. viii. 8. 

Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show thy 
praise. O God, make speed to save me : O Lord, mak* 
haste to help me. 

Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly. 


286 


W? AYERS FOR 


After receimiig the Coneierated and Blessed Bread , say, 

O taste and see how gracious the Lord is: blessed is 
the man that trusteth in him. The beasts do lack and 
suffer hunger; but they which seek the Lord shall want 
no manner of thing that is good. Lord, what am I, that 
my Saviour should become my food ; that the Son of God 
should be the meat of worms, of dust and ashes, of a sin¬ 
ner, of him that was his enemy ? But this thou hast done 
to me, because thou art infinitely*- good and wonderfully 
gracious, and lovest to bless every one of us, in turning us 
from the evil of our ways. Enter into me, blessed Jesus: 
let no root of bitterness spring up in my heart; but be thou 
Lord of all my faculties. O let me feed on thee by faith, 
and grow up by the increase of God to a perfect man in 
Christ Jesus. Amen. Lord, I believe: help mine unbelief. 

Glory be to God the Father, Son, &c. 

After receiving the Cup of Blessing. 

It is finished. Blessed be the mercies of God revealed 
to us in Jesus Christ. O blessed and eternal High-Priest, 
let the sacrifice of the cross, which thou didst once offer 
for the sins of the whole world, and which thou dost now 
and always represent in heaven to thy Father by thy never- 
ceasing intercession, and which this day hath been exhi¬ 
bited on thy holy table sacramentally, obtain mercy and 
peace, faith and charity, safety and establishment to thy 
holy church, which thou hast founded upon a rock, the 
rock of a holy faith; and let not the gates of hell prevail 
against her, nor the enemy of mankind take any soul out 
of thy hand, whom thou hast purchased with thy blood, and 
sanctified by thy Spirit. Preserve all thy people from 
heresy and division of spirit, from scandal and the spirit of 
delusion, from sacrilege and hurtful persecutions. Thou, 
O blessed Jesus, didst die for us : keep me for ever in holy 
living, from sin and sinful shame, in the communion of thy 
church, and thy church in safety and grace, in truth and 
Deace unto thy second coming. Amen. 

Dear Jesu, since thou art pleased to enter into me, O 
be jealous of thy house and the place where thine honour 
dwelleth: suffer no unclean spirit or unholy thought to 
come near thy dwelling, lest it defile the ground, where 
thy holy feet have trod. O teach me so to walk, that I 
may never disrepute the honour of my religion, nor stain 


SEVERAL OCCASIONS. 


287 


the holy robe which thou hast now put upon my soul, nor 
break my holy vows which I have made, and thou hast 
sealed, nor lose my right of inheritance, my privilege of 
being co-heir with Jesus, into the hope of which I have 
now further entered : but be thou pleased to love me with 
the love of a father, and a brother, and a husband, and a 
lord ; and make me to serve thee in the communion of 
saints, in receiving the sacrament, in the practice of all holy 
virtues, in the imitation of thy life, and conformity to thy 
sufferings; that I, having now put on the Lord Jesus, may 
marry his loves and his enmities, may desire his glory, 
may obey his laws, and be united to his Spirit, and in the 
day of the Lord I may be found having on the wedding-gar¬ 
ment, and bearing in my body and soul the marks of the 
Lord Jesus, that I may enter into the joy of the Lord, and 
partake of his glories for ever and ever. Amen. 

Ejaculations to be used any time that day , after the 
solemnity is ended. 

Lord, if I had lived innocently, I could not have deserv¬ 
ed to receive the crumbs that fall from thy table. How 
great is thy mercy, who hast feasted me with the bread of 
virgins, with the wine of angels, with manna from heaven ! 

O when shall I pass from this dark glass, from this veil 
of sacraments, to the vision of thy eternal clarity ; from 
eating thy body, to beholding thy face in thy eternal 
kingdom ? 

Let not my sins crucify the Lord of life again: let it 
never be said concerning me, u The hand of him that be- 
trayeth me, is with me on the table.” 

O that I might love thee as well as ever any creature 
loved thee ! Let me think nothing but thee, desire nothing 
but thee, enjoy nothing but thee. 

O Jesus, be a Jesus unto me. Thou art all things unto 
me. Let nothing ever please me, but what savours of thee 
and thy miraculous sweetness. 

Blessed be the mercies of our Lord, who of God is made 
unto me wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and 
redemption. 

“ He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” Amen. 


THE END OF HOLY LIVING. 












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Cg 




; V • ' * 






















: 1 - ’ -i 

• 

1 
























THE 


RULE AND EXERCISES 

OF 

r- 

HOLY DYING. 

TOGETHER WITH 


PRAYERS AND ACTS OF VIRTUE, 


AND 

RULES FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK, AND OFFICES 
PROPER FOR THAT MINISTRY 


BY JEREMY TAYLOR 


NEW-YORK: 

D. APPLETON & CO., 346 & 348 BROADWAY. 


M.LCCO.LVI. 

<*-o 





TO 


THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 

AND NOBLEST LORD, 

RICHARD, EARL OF CARBERRY, 

SfC. 


my lord, —I am treating your Lordship, as a Roman gen 
tleman did St. Augustine and his mother; I shall entertain 
you in a charnel-house, and carry your meditations awhile 
into the chambers of death, where you shall find the rooms 
dressed up with melancholic arts, and fit to converse with 
your most retired thoughts, which begin with a sigh, and 
proceed in deep consideration, and end in a holy resolution. 
The sight that St. Augustine most noted in that house of 
sorrow, was the body of Caesar, clothed with all the disho¬ 
nours of corruption, that you can suppose in a six months’ 
burial. But I know, that, without pointing, your first 
thoughts will remember the change of a greater beauty, 
which is now dressing for the brightest immortality, and 
from her bed of darkness calls to you to dress your soul 
for that change, which shall mingle your bones with that 
beloved dust, and carry your soul to the same quire, where 
you may both sit and sing for ever. My Lord, it is your 
dear Lady’s anniversary, and she deserved the biggest 
honour, and the longest memory, and the fairest monu¬ 
ment, and the most solemn mourning: and in order to 
it, give me leave, my Lord, to cover her hearse, with 
these following sheets. This book was intended first 
to minister to her piety: and she desired all good people 
should partake of the advantages which are here re¬ 
corded : she knew how to live rarely well, and she de¬ 
sired to know how to die ; and God taught her by an 
experiment. But since her work is done, and God 
supplied her with provisions of his own, before I could 

3 



DEDICATION. 


4 

minister to her, and perfect what she desired, it is neces¬ 
sary to present to your Lordship those bundles of cypress, 
which were intended to dress her closet, but come now to 
dress her hearse. My Lord, both your Lordship and my¬ 
self have lately seen and felt such sorrows of death, and 
such sad departure of dearest friends, that it is more than 
high time we should think ourselves nearly concerned in 
the accidents. Death hath come so near to you, as to 
fetch a portion from your very heart: and now you cannot 
choose but dig your own grave, and place your coffin in 
your eye, when the angel hath dressed your scene of sor¬ 
row and meditation with so particular and so near an ob¬ 
ject : and therefore, as it is my duty, I am come to minister 
to your pious thoughts, and to direct your sorrows, that 
they may turn into virtues and advantages. 

And since I know your Lordship to be so constant and 
regular in your devotions, and so tender in the matter of 
justice, so ready in the expressions of charity, and so ap¬ 
prehensive of religion; and that you are a person, whose 
work of grace is apt, and must every day grow toward 
those degrees, where, when you arrive, you shall triumph 
over imperfection, and choose nothing but what may 
please God ; I could not by any compendium conduct and 
assist your pious purposes so well, as by that, which is the 
great argument and the great instrument of Holy Living, 
the consideration and exercises of death. 

My Lord, it is a great art to die well, and to be learnt 
by men in health, by them that can discourse and consider, 
by those whose understanding and acts of reason are not 
abated with fear or pains: and as the greatest part of 
death is passed by the preceding years of our life, so also 
in those years are the greatest preparations to it: and he 
that prepares not for death before his last sickness, is like 
him that begins to study philosophy when he is going to 
dispute publicly in the faculty. All that a sick and dying 
man can do, is but to exercise those virtues which he be¬ 
fore acquired, and to perfect that repentance, which was 
begun more early. And of this, my Lord, my book, I 
think, is a good testimony; not only because it represents 
the vanity of a late and sick-bed repentance, but because 

contains in it so many precepts and meditations, so 
many propositions and various duties, such forms of exer¬ 
cise. and the degrees and difficulties of so many graces, 


DEDICATION. 


5 

which are necessary preparatives to a holy death, that the 
very learning the duties requires study and skill, time and 
understanding, in the ways of godliness : and it were very 
vain to say so much is necessary, and not to suppose 
more time to learn them, more skill to practise them, 
more opportunities to desire them, more abilities both of 
body and mind, than can be supposed in a sick, amazed, 
timorous, and weak person; whose natural acts are dis¬ 
abled, whose senses are weak, whose discerning faculties 
are lessened, whose principles are made intricate and en¬ 
tangled, upon whose eye sits a cloud, and the heart is 
broken with sickness, and the liver pierced through with 
sorrows and the strokes of death. And, therefore, my Lord, 
it is intended by the necessity of affairs, that the precepts 
of dying well be part of the studies of them that live in 
health, and the days of discourse and understanding, which 
in this case, hath another degree of necessity superadded ; 
because in other notices, an imperfect study may be sup¬ 
plied by a frequent exercise and renewed experience ; here, 
if we practice imperfectly once, we shall never recover the 
error: for we die but once ; and therefore it will be neces¬ 
sary that our skill be more exact, since it is not to be 
mended by trial, but the actions must be for ever left im¬ 
perfect, unless the habit be contracted with study and con¬ 
templation beforehand. 

And indeed I were vain, if I should intend this book to 
be read and studied by dying persons: and they were 
vainer, that should need to be instructed in those graces, 
which they are then to exercise and to finish. For a sick 
bed is only a school of severe exercise, in which the spirit 
of a man is tried, and his graces are rehearsed: and the 
assistances, which I have, in the following pages, given to 
those virtues, which are proper to the state of sickness, are 
such, as suppose a man in the state of grace; or they con¬ 
firm a good man, or they support the weak, or add de¬ 
grees, or minister comfort, or prevent an evil, or cure the 
little mischiefs which are incident to tempted persons in 
their weakness. That is the sum of the present design, 
as it relates to dying persons. And therefore I have not 
inserted any advices proper to old age, but such as are 
common to it and the state of sickness; for I suppose very 
old age to be a longer sickness ,* it is labour and sorrow, 
when it goes beyond the common period of nature : but if 
a 2 2 i> 2 


6 


DEDICATION. 


it be on this side that period, and be healthful; in the same 
degree it is so, I reckon it in the accounts of life : and 
therefore it can have no distinct consideration. But I do 
not think it is a station of advantage to begin the change 
of an evil life in: it is a middle state between life and 
death-bed; and, therefore, although it hath more of hopes 
than this, and less than that: yet as it partakes of either 
state, so it is to be regulated by the advices of that state, 
and judged by its sentences. 

Only this: I desire, that all old persons would sadly 
consider, that their advantages in that state are very few, 
but their inconveniences are not few; their bodies are 
without strength, their prejudices long and mighty, their 
vices (if they have lived wicked) are habitual, the occasions 
of the virtues not many, the possibilities of some (in the 
matter of which they stand very guilty) are past, and shall 
never return again (such are, chastity, and many parts of 
self-denial:) that they have some temptations proper to 
their age, as peevishness and pride, covetousness and talk¬ 
ing, wilfulness and unwillingness to learn; and they think, 
they are protected by age from learning a new, or repent¬ 
ing the old : and do not leave, but change their vices: and 
after all this, either the day of their repentance is past, as 
we see it true in very many; or it is expiring and towards 
the sun-set, as it is in all; and, therefore, although in these 
to recover is very possible, yet we may also remember, 
that, in the matter of virtue and repentance, possibility is 
a great way off from performance: and how few do repent, 
of whom it is only possible, that they may ! and that many 
things more are required to reduce their possibility to act; 
a great grace, an assiduous ministry, an effective calling, 
mighty assistances, excellent counsel, great industry, a 
watchful diligence, a well-disposed mind, passionate de¬ 
sires, deep apprehensions of danger, quick perceptions of 
duty, and time, and God’s good blessing, and effectual im¬ 
pression, and seconding all this, that to will and to do, may, 
by him, be wrought to great purposes, and with great speed. 

And, therefore, it will not be amiss, but it is hugely ne¬ 
cessary, that these persons who have lost their time and 
their blessed opportunities should have the diligence of 
youth, and the zeal of new converts, and take account of 
every hour that is left them, and pray perpetually, and be 
advised prudently, and study the interest of their souls 


DEDICATION. 


7 


carefully, with diligence, and with fear; and their old age, 
which in effect is nothing but a continual death-bed, dressed 
with some more order and advantages, may be a state of 
hope, and labour, and acceptance ; through the infinite mer¬ 
cies of God, in Jesus Christ. 

But concerning sinners really under the arrest of death, 
God hath made no death-bed covenant, the Scripture hath 
recorded no promises, given no instructions ; and there¬ 
fore I had none to give, but only the same which are to 
be given to all men, that are alive, because they are so, 
and because it is uncertain when they shall be otherwise. 
But then this advice I also am to insert, That they are the 
smallest number of Christian men, who can be divided by 
the characters of a certain holiness, or an open villany: 
and between these there are many degrees of latitude, and 
most are of a middle sort, concerning which we are tied 
to make the judgments of charity, and possibly God may 
do too. But, however, all they are such, to whom the 
Rules of Holy Dying are useful and applicable, and there¬ 
fore no separation is to be made in this world. But where 
the case is not evident, men are to be permitted to the un¬ 
erring judgment of God; where it is evident, we can re¬ 
joice or mourn for them that die. 

In the church of Rome, they reckon otherwise concern¬ 
ing sick and dying Christians, than I have done. For 
they make profession, that from death to life, from sin to 
grace, a man i^ay very certainly be changed, though the 
operation begin not before his last hour: and half this they 
do upon his death-bed, and the other half when he is in 
his grave ; and they take away the eternal punishment in 
an instant, by a school-distinction, or the hand of the 
priest; and the temporal punishment shall stick longer, 
even then, when the man is no more measured with time, 
having nothing to do with any thing of, or under, the sun; 
but that they pretend to take away too, when the man is 
dead; and, God knows, the poor man, for all this, pays 
them both in hell. The distinction of temporal and eter¬ 
nal is a just measure of pain, when it refers to this life and 
another: but to dream of a punishment temporal, when 
all his time is done, and to think of repentance, when the 
time of grace is past, are great errors, the one in philoso¬ 
phy, and both in divinity, and are a huge folly in their pre¬ 
tence, and infinite danger if they are believed; being a 


DEDICATION. 


3 

certain destruction of the necessity of holy living, when 
men dare trust them, and live at the rate of such doctrines, 
the secret of these is soon discovered : for by such means 
though a holy life be not necessary, yet a priest is: as if 
God did not appoint the priest to minister to holy living, 
but to excuse it: so making the holy calling not only to 
live upon the sins of the people, but upon their ruin, and 
the advantages of their function to spring from their eter¬ 
nal dangers. It is an evil craft to serve a temporal end 
upon the death of souls; that is an interest not to be han¬ 
dled but with nobleness and ingenuity, fear and caution, 
diligence and prudence, with great skill and great honesty, 
with reverence, and trembling, and severity : a soul is worth 
all that, and the need we have requires all that; and there¬ 
fore those doctrines, that go less than all this, are not friendly 
because they are not safe. 

I know no other difference in the visitation and treating 
of sick persons, than what depends upon the article of late 
repentance: for all churches agree in the same essential 
propositions, and assist the sick by the same internal mi¬ 
nistries. As for external, I mean unction, used in the 
church of Rome, since it is used when the man is above 
half dead, when he can exercise no act of understanding, 
it must needs be nothing: for no rational man can think, 
that any ceremony can make a spiritual change, without a 
spiritual act of him that is to be changed; nor work by 
way of nature, or by charm, but morally and after the 
manner of reasonable creatures ; and therefore I do not 
think that ministry at all fit to be reckoned among the ad¬ 
vantages of sick persons. The fathers of the council of 
Trent first disputed, and after this manner at last agreed, 
that extreme unction was instituted by Christ. But after¬ 
ward, being admonished by one of their theologues, that 
the apostles ministered unction to infirm people, before they 
were priests (the priestly order, according to their doctrine, 
being collated in the institution of the last supper,) for fear 
that it should be thought, that this unction might be ad¬ 
ministered by him that was no priest, they blotted out the 
word instituted , and put in its stead insinuated , this sacra¬ 
ment, and that it was published by St. James. So it is in 
their doctrine: and yet, in their anathematisms, they 
curse all them that shall deny it to have been instituted b) 
Christ. I shall lay no more prejudice against it, or the 


DEDICATION. 


9 

weak arts of them that maintaia it, but add this only, that 
there being but two places of Scripture pretended for this 
ceremony, some chief men of their own side have pro¬ 
claimed these two invalid as to the institution of it; for 
Suarez says, that the unction used by the apostle in St. 
Mark vi. 13, is not the same with what is used in the church 
of Rome; and that it cannot be plainly gathered from the 
Epistle of St. James, Cajetan affirms, and that it did be¬ 
long to the miraculous gift of healing, not to a sacrament. 
The sick man’s exercise of grace formerly acquired, his 
perfecting repentance begun in the days of health, the 
prayers and counsels of the holy man that ministers, the 
gi'ving the holy sacrament, the ministry and assistance of 
angels, and the mercies of God, the peace of conscience, 
and the peace of the church, are all the assistances and 
preparatives that can help to dress his lamp. But if a man 
shall go to buy oil, when the bridegroom comes, if his lamp 
be not first furnished and then trimmed, that in this life, 
this upon his death-bed, his station will be without doors, 
his portion with unbelievers, and the unction of the dying 
man shall no more strengthen his soul than it cures his 
body, and the prayers for him after his death shall be of 
the same force, as if they should pray, that he should re¬ 
turn to life again the next day, and live as long as Lazarus 
in his return. But I consider, that it is not well that men 
should pretend any thing will do a man good, when he 
dies ; and yet the same ministries and ten times more as¬ 
sistances are found for forty or fifty years together to be 
ineffectual. Can extreme unction at last cure, what the 
holy sacrament of the eucharist, all his lifetime, could 
not do 1 Can prayers for a dead man do him more good 
than when he was alive ? If all his days the man belonged 
to death and the dominion of sin, and from thence could 
not be recovered by sermons, and counsels, and perpetual 
precepts, and frequent sacraments, by confessions and ab¬ 
solutions, by prayers and advocations, by external minis¬ 
tries and internal acts, it is but too certain, that his lamp 
cannot then be furnished : his extreme unction is only then 
of use, when it is made by the oil that burned in his lamp, 
in all the days of his expectation and waiting for the coming 
of the bridegroom. 

Neither can any supply be made in this case by their 
practice of praying for the dead ; though they pretend foi 


DEDICATION. 


10 

this the fairest precedents of the church and of the whole 
world. The heathens, they say, did it, and the Jews did 
it, and the Christians did it: some were baptized for the 
dead in the days of the apostles, and very many were com¬ 
municated for the dead for so many ages after. It is true, 
they were so, and did so: the heathens prayed for an easy 
grave, and a perpetual spring, that saffron would rise from 
their beds of grass. The Jews prayed, that the souls of 
their dead might be in the garden of Eden, that they might 
have their part in Paradise, and in the world to come ; and 
that they might hear the peace of the fathers of their ge¬ 
neration, sleeping in Hebron. And the Christians prayed 
for a joyful resurrection, for mercy at the day of judgment, 
for hastening of the coming of Christ, and the kingdom of 
God; and they named all sorts of persons in their prayers, 
all, I mean, but wicked persons, all but them that lived 
evil lives : they named apostles, saints, and martyrs. And 
all this is so nothing to their purpose, or so much against 
it, that the prayers for the dead, used in the church of 
Rome, are most plainly condemned, because they are 
against the doctrine and practices of all the world, in other 
forms, to other purposes, relying upon distinct doctrines, 
until new opinions began to arise about St. Augustine’s 
time, and changed the face of the proposition. Concerning 
prayer for the dead, the church hath received no com¬ 
mandment from the Lord; and therefore concerning it we 
can have no rules nor proportions, but from those imper¬ 
fect revelations of the state of departed souls, and the mea¬ 
sures of charity, which can relate only to the imperfection 
of their present condition, and the terrors of the day of 
judgment: but to think that any suppletory to an evil life 
can be taken from such devotions, after the sinners are dead, 
may encourage a bad man to sin, but cannot relieve him, 
when he hath. 

But, of all things in the world, methinks, men should 
be most careful not to abuse dying people : not only be¬ 
cause their condition is pitiable, but because they shall 
soon be discovered, and, in the secret regions of souls, 
there shall be an evil report concerning those men who 
have deceived them: and if we believe we shall go to that 
place, where such reports are made, we may fear the shame 
and the amazement of being accounted impostors in the 
presence of angels, and all the wise holy men of the world 


DEDICATION. 


11 

To be erring and innocent, is hugely pitiable, and incident 
to mortality; that we cannot help : but to deceive or to 
destroy so great an interest as is that of a soul, or to lessen 
its advantages, by giving it trifling and false confidences, 
is injurious and intolerable. And therefore it were very 
well, if all the churches of the world would be extremely 
curious concerning their offices and ministries of the visi 
tation of the sick: that their ministers they send, be ho 
and prudent; that their instructions be severe and safe 
and their sentences be merciful and reasonable ; that their 
offices be sufficient and devout; that their attendances be 
frequent and long; that their deputations be special and 
peculiar; that the doctrines, upon which they ground their 
offices, be true, material, and holy ; that their ceremonies 
be few, and their advices wary ; that their separation be 
full of caution, their judgments not remiss, their remis¬ 
sions not loose and dissolute; and that all the whole minis¬ 
tration be made by persons of experience and charity. 
For it is a sad thing to see our dead go out of our hands: 
they live incuriously., and die without regard; and the last 
scene of their life, which should be dressed with all spirit¬ 
ual advantages, is abused by flattery and easy propositions, 
and let go with carelessness and folly. 

My Lord, I have endeavoured to cure some part of the 
evil as well as I could, being willing to relieve the needs 
of indigent people in such ways as I can; and therefore 
have described the duties which every sick man may do 
alone, and such, in which he can be assisted by the minis¬ 
ter : and am the more confident, that these my endeavours 
will be the better entertained, because they are the first 
entire body of directions for sick and dying people, that I 
remember to have been published in the church of Eng¬ 
land. In the church of Rome, there have been many ; 
but they are dressed with such doctrines, which are some¬ 
times useless, sometimes hurtful, and their whole design of 
assistance, which they commonly yield, is at the best im¬ 
perfect, and the representment is too careless and loose for 
so severe an employment. So that, in this affair, I was 
almost forced to walk alone; only that I drew the rules and 
advices from the fountains of Scripture, and the purest 
channels of the primitive church, and was helped by some 
experience in the cure of souls. I shall measure the suc¬ 
cess of my labours, not by popular noises or the sentences 


12 


DEDICATION. 


of curious persons, but by the advantage which good peo_ 
pie may receive. My work here is not to please the spe¬ 
culative part of men, but to minister to practice, to preach 
to the weary, to comfort the sick, to assist the penitent, to 
reprove the confident, to strengthen weak hands and feeble 
knees, having scarce any other possibilities left me of doing 
alms, or exercising that charity by which we shall be judged 
at doomsday. It is enough for me to be an underbuilder 
in the house of God, and I glory in the employment; 1 
labour in the foundations; and therefore the work needs 
no apology for being plain, so it be strong and well lai(b 
But, my Lord, as mean as it is, I must give God thanks 
for the desires and the strength ; and, next to him, to you, 
for that opportunity and little portion of leisure, which I 
had to do it in: for I must acknowledge it publicly (and 
besides my prayers, it is all the recompense I can make 
you,) my being quiet I owe to your interest, much of my 
support to your bounty, and many other collateral comforts 
I derive from your favour and nobleness. My Lord, be¬ 
cause I much honour you, and because I would do honour 
to myself, I have written your name in the entrance of my 
book: I am sure you will entertain it, because the design 
related to your dear Lady, and because it may minister to 
your spirit in the day of visitation; when God shall call 
for you to receive your reward for your charity and your 
noble piety, by which you have not only endeared very 
many persons, but in great degrees have obliged me to be. 

My noblest Lord, 

Your Lordship’s most thankful 

and most humble servant, 

JER. TAYLOR 


THE 


odf i 
■» -h 1 

RULE AND EXERCISES 

OF 

HOLY DYING, 


CHAPTER I. 

A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND BLESSED 
DEATH BY WAY OF CONSIDERATION. 

SECTION I. 

Consideration of the Vanity and Shortness of Man's Life. 

A man is a bubble (said the Greek proverb,) which Lu¬ 
cian represents with advantages and its proper circum¬ 
stances to this purpose : saying, All the world is a storm, 
and men rise up in their several generations, like bubbles 
descending a Jove pluvio , from God and the dew of heaven, 
from a tear and drop of rain, from nature and Providence ; 
and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first 
parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no 
other business in the world, but to be born, that they might 
be able to die: others float up and down two or three turns, 
and suddenly disappear, and give their place to others: 
and they that live longest upon the face of the waters, are 
in perpetual motion, restless and uneasy; and, being 
crushed with the great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness 
and a froth; the change not being great, it being hardly 
possible it should be more a nothing than it was before. 
So is every man ; he is born in vanity and sin ; he comes 
into the world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up 
their heads into the air, and conversing with their kindred 
of the same production, and as soon they turn into dust 
and forgetfulness: some of them without any other interest 
in the affairs of the world, but that they made their parents 
a little glad, and very sorrowful; others ride longer in the 
storm ; it may be until seven years of vanity be expired 
h 2 E 13 



14 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


and then peradventure the sun shines hot upon their heads., 
and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of death 
and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if the bub¬ 
ble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the 
chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a 
pail of water, of being overlaid by a sleepy servant, cr such 
little accidents, then the young man dances like a bubble, 
empty and gay, and shines like a dove’s neck, or the image 
of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very 
imagery and colours are fantastical; and so he dances out 
the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a storm, and 
endures, only because he is not knocked on the head by a 
drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load 
of indigested meat, or quenched by the disorder of an ill- 
placed humour: and to preserve a man alive in the midst 
of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as 
to create him; to preserve him from rushing into nothing, 
and at first to draw him up from nothing, were equally the 
issues of an almighty power. And therefore the wise men 
of the world have contended, who shall best fit man’s con¬ 
dition with words signifying his vanity and short abode. 
Homer calls a man “ a leaf,” the smallest, the weakest 
piece of a short-lived, unsteady plant. Pindar calls him 
“ the dream of a shadowAnother, “ the dream of the 
shadow of smoke.” But St. James spake by a more ex¬ 
cellent Spirit, saying, “ Our life is but a vapour,”* viz. 
drawn from the earth by a celestial influence ; made of 
smoke, or the lighter parts of water, tossed with every wind, 
moved by the motion of a superior body, without virtue in 
itself, lifted up on high, or left below, according as it 
pleases the sun, its foster-father. But it is lighter yet. It 
is but appearing; a fantastic vapour, an apparition, no¬ 
thing real: it is not so much as a mist, not the matter of a 
shower, nor substantial enough to make a cloud ; but it is 
like Cassiopeia’s chair, or Pelops’ shoulder, or the circles 
of heaven, for which you cannot have a word 

that can signify a verier nothing. And yet the expression 
is one* degree more made diminutive : a vapour, and fan¬ 
tastical, or a mere appearance, and this but for a little while 
neither; the very dream, the phantasm disappears in a 
small time, “ like the shadow that departeth; or like a tale 
that is told; or as a dream when one waketh.” A man is 

* James iv. 14. 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


15 


so vain, so unfixed, so perishing a creature, that he cannot 
long last in the scene of fancy : a man goes off, and is for¬ 
gotten, like the dream of a distracted person. The sum 
of all is this: that thou art a man, than whom there is not in 
the world any greater instance of heights and declensions, 
of lights and shadows, of misery and folly, of laughter and 
tears, of groans and death. 

And because this consideration is of great usefulness 
and great necessity to many purposes of wisdom and the 
spirit; all the succession of time, all the changes in nature, 
all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thou¬ 
sands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to 
every man, and to every creature, doth preach our funeral 
sermon, and calls us to look and see*, how the old sexton 
Time throws up the earth, and digs a grave, where we must 
lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they 
rise again in a fair or an intolerable eternity. Every re¬ 
volution which the sun makes about the world, divides 
between life and death; and death possesses both those 
portions by the next morrow ; and we are dead to all those 
months which we have already lived, and we shall never 
live them over again : and still God makes little periods 
of our age. First we change our world, when we come 
from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun. Then we 
sleep and enter into the image of death, in which state we 
are unconcerned in all the changes of the world : and if 
our mothers or our nurses die, or a wild boar destroy our 
vineyards, or our king be sick, we regard it not, but during 
that state, are as disinterested, as if our eyes were closed 
with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth. At 
the end of seven years our teeth fall and die before us, re¬ 
presenting a formal prologue to the tragedy ; and still every 
seven years, it is odds, but we shall finish the last scene : 
and when nature, or chance, or vice, takes our body in pieces, 
weakening some parts and loosing others, we taste the grave 
and the solemnities of our own funerals, first, in those 
parts that ministered to vice ; and next, in them that served 
for ornament; and in a short time, even they that served 
for necessity become useless and entangled like the wheels 
of a broken clock. Baldness is but a dressing to our fu¬ 
nerals, the proper ornament of mourning, and of a person 
entered very far into the regions and possession of death: 
and we have many more of the same signification : gray 


16 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breatft 
stiff’limbs, wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed appetite. 
Every day’s necessity calls for a reparation of that portion, 
which death fed on all night, w T hen we lay in his lap, and . 
slept in his outer chambers. ^The very spirits of a man \ 
prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh, and every 
meal is a rescue from one death, and lays up for another ; 
and W’hile we think a thought, we die; and the clock strikes 
and reckons on our portion of eternity; we form our words 
with the breath of our nostrils, we have the less to live upon 
for every word we speak. 

Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things 
which are the instruments of acting it: and God, by all the 
variety of his providence, makes us see death every where, 
in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the 
fancies, and the expectation of every single person. Na¬ 
ture hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath 
two: and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men 
and women to charnel-houses; and all the summer long, 
men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the 
dog-days come, and then the Sirian star makes the summer 
deadly; and the fruits of autumn are laid up for all the 
year’s provision, and the man that gathers them, eats and 
surfeits, and dies, and needs them not, and himself is laid 
up for eternity ; and he that escapes till winter, only stays 
for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quar¬ 
ter minister to him with great variety. Thus death reigns 
in all the portions of our time. The autumn with its fruits 
provides disorders for us, and the winter’s cold turns them 
into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew 
our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles 
to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and 
agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to 
death ; and you can go no whither, but you tread upon a 
dead man’s bones. 

The wild fellow in Petronius, that escaped upon a broken 
table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning 
himself upon the rocky shore, espied a man rolled upon 
his floating bed of waves, ballasted with sand in the folds 
of his garment, and carried by his civil enemy, the sea, to¬ 
wards the shore to find a grave : and it cast him into some 
sad thoughts: that peradventure this man’s wife, in some 
part of the continent, safe and warm, looks next month for 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


17 


the good man's return; or, it may be, his son knows nothing 
of the tempest; or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss, 
which still is warm upon the good old man’s cheek, ever 
since he took a kind farewell; and he weeps with joy to 
think, how blessed he shall be, when his beloved boy re¬ 
turns into the circle of fiis father’s arms. These are the 
thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their de¬ 
signs : a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and 
a broken cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dashed in 
pieces the fortune of a whole family, and they that shall 
weep loudest for the accident, are not yet entered into the 
storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck. Then looking 
upon the carcass, he knew it, and found it to be the master 
of the ship, who, the day before, cast up the accounts of 
his patrimony and his trade, and named the day when he 
thought to be at home. See how the man swims, who was so 
angry two days since; his passions are becalmed with the 
storm, his accounts cast up, his cares at an end, his voyage 
done, and his gains are the strange events of death, which 
whether they be good or evil, the men, that are alive, seldom 
trouble themselves concerning the interest of the dead. 

But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces: every 
where we may be shipwrecked. (A valiant general, when 
he is to reap the harvest of his crowns and triumphs, fights 
unprosperously, or falls into a fever with joy and wine, and 
changes his laurel into cypress, his triumphal chariot to a 
hearse; dying the night before he was appointed to perish, 
in the drunkenness of his festival joys. }It was a sad arrest 
of the loosenesses and wilder feasts of the French court, 
when their king (Henry II.) was killed really by the spor¬ 
tive image of a fight. And many brides have died under 
the hands of paranymphs and maidens, dressing them for 
uneasy joy, the new and undiscerned chains of marriage, 
according to the saying of Bensirah, the wise Jew, “ The 
•bride went into her chamber, and knew not what should 
befal her there.” Some have been paying their vows, and 
giving thanks for a prosperous return to their own house, 
and the roof hath descended upon their heads, and turned 
their loud religion into the deeper silence of a grave. And 
how many teeming mothers have rejoiced over their swell¬ 
ing wombs, and pleased themselves in becoming the chan¬ 
nels of blessing to a family ; and the midwife hath quickly 
bound their heads and feet, and carried them forth to burial! 
b 2 2 e 2 




18 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


Or else the birth-day of an heir hath seen the coffin of the 
father brought into the house, and the divided mother hath 
been forced to travail twice, with a painful birth, and a sad¬ 
der death. 

There is no state, no accident, no circumstance of our 
life, but it hath been soured b/ some sad instance of a 
dying friend: a friendly meeting often ends in some sad 
mischance, and makes an eternal parting: and when the 
poet JEschylus was sitting under the walls of his house, an 
eagle hovering over his bald head, mistook it for a stone, 
and let fall his oyster, hoping theie to break the shell, but 
pierced the poor man’s skull. 

Death meets us every where, and is procured by every 
instrument and in all chances, and enters in at many doors ; 
by violence and secret influence, by the aspect of a star 
and the stink of a mist, by the emissions of a cloud and 
the meeting of a vapour, by the fall of a chariot and the 
stumbling at a stone, by a full meal or an empty stomach, by 
watching at the wine or by watching at prayers, by the sun 
or the moon; by a heat or a cold, by sleepless nights or 
sleeping days; by water frozen into the hardness and sharp¬ 
ness of a dagger ; or water thawed into the floods of a river; 
by a hair or a raisin; by violent motion or sitting still ; by 
severity or dissolution ; by God’s mercy or God’s anger; by 
every thing in providence and every thing in manners; by 
every thing in nature and every thing in chance. Eripitur 
persona , manet res; we take pains to heap up things useful 
to our life, and get our death in the purchase ; and the per¬ 
son is snatched away, and the goods remain. And all this 
is the law and constitution of nature ; it is a punishment to 
our sins, the unalterable event of Providence, and the de¬ 
cree of Heaven. The chains that confine us to this condi¬ 
tion are strong as destiny, and immutable as the eternal 
laws of God. 

I have conversed with some men who rejoiced in the 
death or calamity of others, and accounted it as a judg¬ 
ment upon them for being on the other side, and against 
them in the contention; but within the revolution of a few 
months, the same man met with a more uneasy and un¬ 
handsome death : which when I saw, I wept, and was 
afraid; for I knew that it must be so with all men; for we 
also shall die, and end our quarrels and contentions by 
passing to a final sentence. 


PREPi* RATORY TO DEATH. 


19 


SECTION II. 

The Consideration reduced to Practice. 

It will be very material to our best and noblest purposes, 
if we represent this scene of change and sorrow, a little 
more dressed up in circumstances; for so we shall be more 
apt to practise those rules, the doctrine of which is con¬ 
sequent to this consideration. It is a mighty change, that 
is made by the death of every person, and it is visible to 
us, who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness 
of youth, and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood, 
from the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of 
five-and-twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to 
the loathsomeness and horror of a three days’ burial, and 
we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very 
strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springingfrom the 
clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as the morning, 
and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb’s fleece; but when 
a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dis¬ 
mantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began 
to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the 
symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head, and broke 
its stalk, and, at night, having lost some of its leaves and 
all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn 
faces. The same is the portion of every man and every 
woman; the heritage of worms and serpents, rottenness 
and cold dishonour, and our beauty so changed, that our 
acquaintance quickly know us not: and that change min¬ 
gled with so much horror, or else meets so with our fears 
and weak discoursings, that they who, six hours ago, 
tended upon us, either with charitable or ambitious ser¬ 
vices, cannot, without some regret, stay in the room alone, 
where the body lies stripped of its life and honour. I have 
read of a fair young German gentleman, who, living, often 
refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his 
friends’ desire, by giving way, that, after a few days burial, 
they might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw 
cause for it, draw the image of his death unto the life. 
They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff 
and backbone full of serpents; and so he stands pictured 
among his armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty 
change, and it will be as bad with you and me: and then, 
what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave 1 


20 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


what friends to visit us ? what officious people to cleanse 
away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our 
faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are 
lohgest weepers for our funeral? 

This discourse will be useful, if we consider and prac¬ 
tise by the following rules and considerations respectively. 

1. All the rich and all the covetous men in the world 
will perceive, and all the world will perceive for them, that 
it is but an ill recompense for all their cares, that, by this 
time, all that shall be left, will be this, that the neighbours 
shall say, “ He died a rich manand yet his wealth will not 
profit him in the grave, but hugely swell the sad accounts of 
doomsday. And he that kills the Lord’s people with unjust 
or ambitious wars for an unrewarding interest, shall have this 
character, that he threw away all the days of his life, that one 
year might be reckoned with his name, and computed by his 
reign or consulship: and many men, by great labours and 
affronts, many indignities and crimes, labour only for a pomp¬ 
ous epitaph, and a loud title upon their marble; whilst those, 
into whose possessions their heirs or kindred are entered, 
are forgotten, and lie unregarded as their ashes, and with¬ 
out concernment or relation, as the turf upon the face of 
their grave. A man may read a sermon, the best and most 
passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter 
into the sepulchres of kings. In the same Escurial, where 
the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and de¬ 
cree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery, 
where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall 
be no more : and where our kings have been crowned, 
their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their 
grandsire’s head to take his crown. There is an acre sown 
with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich 
to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living 
like gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the 
flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the 
itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissem¬ 
bling colours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. 
There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and 
the miserable, the beloved and the despised, princes 
mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mor¬ 
tality, and tell all the world, that, when we die, our ashes 
shall be equal to kings’, and our accounts easier, and our 
pains for our crown shall be less. To my apprehension, 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


21 


it is a sad record which is left by Athenaeus concerning 
Ninus, the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death 
are summed up in these words: “ Ninus, the Assyrian, 
had an ocean of gold, and other riches more than the sand 
in the Caspian sea; he never saw the stars, and perhaps 
he never desired it: he never stirred up the holy fire 
among the Magi, nor touched his god with the sacred rod 
according to the laws: he never offered sacrifice, nor wor¬ 
shipped the deity, nor administered justice, nor spake to 
his people, nor numbered them; but he was most valiant 
to eat and drink, and, having mingled his wines, he threw 
the rest upon the stones. This man is dead : behold his 
sepulchre ; and now hear where Ninus is. Sometimes I 
was Ninus, and drew the breath of a living man ; but now 
am nothing but clay. I have nothing, but what I did eat, 
and what I served to myself in lust, that was and is all my 
portion. The wealth with which I was esteemed blessed, 
my enemies meeting together shall bear away, as the mad 
Thyades carry a raw goat. I am gone to hell ; and when 
I went thither, I neither carried gold, nor horse, nor silver 
chariot. I that wore a mitre, am now a little heap of dust.” 
I know not any thing, that can better represent the evil 
condition of a wicked man, or a changing greatness. From 
the greatest secular dignity to dust and ashes his nature 
bears him, and from thence to hell his sins carry him, and 
there he shall be for ever under the dominion of chains and 
devils, wrath and an intolerable calamity. This is the re¬ 
ward of an unsanctified condition, and a greatness ill gotten 
or ill administered. 

2. Let no man extend his thoughts, or let his hopes 
wander towards future and far-distant events and acci¬ 
dental contingencies. This day is mine and yours, but 
ye know not what shall be on the morrow: and every morn¬ 
ing creeps out of a dark cloud, leaving behind it an igno¬ 
rance and silence deep as midnight, and undiscerned as 
are the phantasms that make a chrisom-child to smile: so 
that we cannot discern what comes hereafter, unless we 
had a light from heaven brighter than the vision of an 
angel, even the spirit of prophecy. Without revelation, 
we cannot tell, whether we shall eat to-morrow, or whether 
a squinancy shall choke us : and it is written in the unre¬ 
vealed folds of Divine predestination, that many, who are 
this day alive, shall to-morrow be laid upon the cold earth. 


22 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


and the women shall weep over their shroud, and dress 
them for their funeral. St. James, in his epistle, notes the 
folly of some men, his contemporaries, who were so impa¬ 
tient of the event of to-morrow, or the accidents of next 
year, or the good or evils of old age, that they would con¬ 
sult astrologers and witches, oracles and devils, what 
should befall them the next Calends: what should he the 
event of such a voyage, what God had written in his book 
concerning the success of battles, the election of emperors, 
the heirs of families, the price of merchandise, the return 
of the Tyrian fleet, the rate of Sidonian carpets: and as 
they were taught by the crafty and lying demons, so they 
would expect the issue ; and oftentimes by disposing their 
affairs in order towards such events, really did produce 
some little accidents according to their expectation: and 
that made them trust the oracles in greater things, and in 
all. Against this he opposes his counsel, that we should 
not search after forbidden records, much less by uncertain 
significations ; for whatsoever is disposed to happen by 
the order of natural causes or civil counsels, may be re¬ 
scinded by a peculiar decree of Providence, or be pre¬ 
vented by the death of the interested persons : w r ho, while 
their hopes are full, and their causes conjoined, and the 
work brought forward, and the sickle put into the harvest, 
and the first-fruits offered and ready to be eaten, even then, 
if they put forth their hand to an event that stands but at 
the door, at that door their body may be carried forth to 
burial, before the expectation shall enter into fruition. 
When Richilda, the widow of Albert, earl of Ebersberg, 
had feasted the emperor Henry III. and petitioned in be¬ 
half of her nephew Welpho, for some lands formerly pos¬ 
sessed by the Earl her husband; just as the Emperor held 
out his hand to signify his consent, the chamber-floor sud¬ 
denly fell under them, and Richilda falling upon the edge of 
a bathing vessel was bruised to death, and stayed not to see 
her nephew sleep in those lands, which the Emperor was 
reaching forth to her, and placed at the door of restitution. 

3. As our hopes must be confined, so must our designs : 
let us not project long designs, crafty plots, and diggings 
so deep, that the intrigues of a design shall never be un¬ 
folded, till our grand-children have forgotten our virtues or 
our vices. The work of our soul is cut short, facile, sweet, 
and plain, and fitted to the small portions of our shorter 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


23 


life: and as we must not trouble our inquiry, so neither 
must we intricate our labour and purposes with what we 
shall never enjoy. This rule does not forbid us to plant 
orchards, which shall feed our nepheAVs with their fruit; 
for by such provisions they do something towards an ima¬ 
ginary immortality, and do charity to their relatives: but 
such projects are reproved, which discompose our present 
duty by long and future designs; such, which by casting 
our labours to events at a distance, make us less to re¬ 
member our death standing at the door. It is fit for a 
man to Avork for his day’s Avages, or to contrive for the hire 
of a week, or to lay a train to make provisions for such a 
time as is within our eye, and in our duty, and within the 
usual periods of man’s life ; for whatsoever is made neces¬ 
sary, is also made prudent: but while Ave plot and busy 
ourselves in the toils of an ambitious Avar, or the levies of 
a great estate, night enters in upon us, and tells all the 
world, Iioav like fools we lived, and how deceived and mi¬ 
serably Ave died. Seneca tells of Senecio Cornelius, a man 
crafty in getting, and tenacious in holding a great estate, 
and one Avho was as diligent in the care of his body as of 
his money, curious of his health as of his possessions, that 
he all day long attended upon his sick and dying friend ; 
but, Avhen he Avent aAvay, Avas quickly comforted, supped 
merrily, Avent to bed cheerfully, and on a sudden being 
surprised by a squinancy, scarce dreAV his breath until the 
morning, but by that time died, being snatched from the 
torrent of his fortune, and the swelling tide of AVealth, and 
a likely hope bigger than the necessities of ten men. This 
accident Avas much noted then in Rome, because it happened 
in so great a fortune, and in the midst of Avealthy designs; 
and presently it made Avise men to consider, hoAV imprudent 
a person he is, who disposes of ten years to come, when he 
is not lord of to-morrow. 

4. Though we must not look so far off, and pry abroad, 
yet Ave must be busy near at hand; we must, with all arts 
of the spirit, seize upon the present, because it passes 
from us while Ave speak, and because in it all our certainty 
does consist. We must take our Avaters as out of a tor¬ 
rent and sudden shower, which will quickly cease drop¬ 
ping from above, and quickly cease running in our chan¬ 
nels here beloAv ; this instant will never return again, and 
vet, it may be, this instant will declare or secure the for- 


24 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


tune of a whole eternity. The old Greeks and Romans 
taught us the prudence of this rule : but Christianity 
teaches us the religion of it. They so seized upon the pre¬ 
sent, that they would lose nothing of the day’s pleasure; 
“ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die that 
was their philosophy; and at their solemn feasts, they 
would talk of death to heighten the present drinking, and 
that they might warm their veins with a fuller chalice, as 
knowing the drink that was poured upon their graves, 
would be cold and without relish. “ Break the beds, 
drink your wine, crown your heads with roses, and besmear 
your curled locks with nard: for God bids you to remember 
death so the epigrammatist speaks the sense of their 
drunken principles. Something towards this signification 
is that of Solomon, “ There is nothing better for a man, 
than that he should eat and drink, and that he should 
make his soul enjoy good in his labour; for that is his por¬ 
tion : for who shall bring him to see that which shall be aftei 
him But although he concludes all this to be vanity, 
yet because it was the best thing that was then commonly 
known, that they should seize upon the present with a 
temperate use of permitted pleasures, I had reason to say, 
that Christianity taught us to turn this into religion. For 
he that by a present and constant holiness secures the pre¬ 
sent, and makes it useful to his noblest purposes, he turns 
his condition into his best advantage, by making his una¬ 
voidable fate become his necessary religion. 

To the purpose of this rule is that collect of Tuscan 
Hieroglyphics, which we have from Gabriel Simeon. “ Our 
life is very short, beauty is a cozenage, money is false and 
fugitive; empire is odious, and hated by them that have it 
not, and uneasy to them that have ; victory is always uncer¬ 
tain, and peace, most commonly, is but a fraudulent bar¬ 
gain ; old age is miserable, death is the period, and is a 
happy one, if it be not soured by the sins of our life; but 
nothing continues but the effects of that wisdom, which 
employs the present time in the acts of a holy religion, and 
a peaceable conscience for they make us to live even be¬ 
yond our funerals, embalmed in the spices and odours of a 
good name, and entombed in the grave of the holy Jesus ; 
where we shall be dressed for a blessed resurrection to the 
state of angels and beatified spirits. 

* Eccles. iii. 22. ii. 24. 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


01 


5. Since we stay not here, being people but of a day’s 
abode, and our age is like that of a fly, and contemporary 
with a gourd, we must look somewhere else for an abiding 
city, a place in another country to fix our house in, whose 
w r alls and foundation is God, where we must find rest, or 
else be restless for ever. For whatsoever ease we can have 
or fancy here, is shortly to be changed into sadness, or 
tediousness : it goes away too soon, like the periods of our 
life: or stays too long, like the sorrows of a sinner: its 
own weariness, or a contrary disturbance, is its load; or it 
is eased by its revolution into vanity and forgetfulness; 
and where either there is sorrow or an end of joy, there 
can be no true felicity: which, because it must be had by 
some instrument, and in some period of our duration, we 
must carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for 
us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity is the 
state, angels are the company, the Lamb is the light, and 
God is the portion and inheritance. ) 


4 


SECTION III. 

Rules and spiritual arts of lengthening our days , and to 
take off the objection of a short life . 

In the accounts of a man’s life, we do not reckon that 
portion of days, in which we are shut up in the prison 
of the womb ; we tell our years from the day of our birth: 
and the same reason, that makes our reckoning to stay 
so long, says also, that then it begins too soon. For then 
we are beholden to others to make the account for us: for 
we know not of a long time, whether we be alive or no, 
having but some little approaches and symptoms of a life. 
To feed, and sleep, and move a little, and imperfectly, is 
the state of an unborn child: and when he is born, he 
does no more for a good while; and what is it that shall 
make him to be esteemed to live the life of a man ? and 
when shall that account begin? For we shall be loath to 
have the accounts of our age taken by the measures of a 
beast: and fools and distracted persons are reckoned as 
civilly dead; they are no parts of the commonwealth, nor 
subject to laws, but secured by them in charity, and kept 
from violence as a man keeps his ox; and a third part of 
our life is spent, before we enter into a higher order, into 
the state of a man. 

2. Neither must we think, that the life of a man begins 

2 F 


c 


26 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


when he can feed himself, or walk alone, when he can 
fight, or beget his like ; for so he is contemporary with a 
camel or a cow ; but he is first a man, when lie comes to a 
certain, steady use of reason, according to his proportion : 
and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. 
Some are called at age, at fourteen; some, at one-and* 
twenty; some, never; but all men, late enough: for the life 
of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But as when 
the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first 
opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of 
darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to 
matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and 
peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, 
like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he w r as 
forced to w r ear a veil, because himself had seen the face of 
God; and still while a man tells the story, the suns gets 
up higher, till he shows a fair face and full light, and 
then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and 
sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets 
quickly: so is a man’s reason and his life. He first be¬ 
gins to perceive himself to see or taste, making little re¬ 
flections upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of 
flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty: but 
when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little in¬ 
stitutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and imper¬ 
tinent things, not because he needs them, but because his 
understanding is no bigger, and little images of things are 
laid before him, like a cock-boat to a whale, only to play 
withal: but before a man comes to be wise, he is half dead 
with gouts and consumptions, with catarrhs and aches, 
with sore eyes and worn-out body. So that if we must not 
reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, 
he is long before his soul be dressed; and he is not to be 
called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a soul 
at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well¬ 
being : but by that time his soul is thus furnished, his body 
is decayed; and then you can hardly reckon him to be 
alive, when his body is possessed by so many degrees of 
death. 

3. But there is yet another arrest. At first he wants 
strength of body, and then he wants the use of reason : 
and when that is come, it is ten to one, but he stops by 
the impediments of vice, and wants the strength of the 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


27 


spirit; and we know that body and soul and spirit are the 
constituent parts of every Christian man. And now let 
us consider what that thing is, which we call years of dis¬ 
cretion. The young man is past his tutors, and arrived at 
the bondage of a caitiff spirit; he is run from discipline, 
and is let loose to passion ; the man by this time hath wit 
enough to choose his vice, to act his lust, to court his mis¬ 
tress, to talk confidently and ignorantly, and perpetually, 
to despise his betters, to deny nothing to his appetite, to 
do things, that when he is indeed a man, he must for ever 
be ashamed of: for this is all the discretion that most men 
show in the first stage of their manhood; they can discern 
good from evil; and they prove their skill by leaving all 
that is good, and wallowing in the evils of folly and an un¬ 
bridled appetite. And, by this time, the young man hath 
contracted vicious habits, and is a beast in manners,-and 
therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of 
his life : he is a fool in his understanding, and that is a 
sad death ; and he is dead in trespasses and sins, and that 
is a sadder; so that he hath no life but a natural, the life of 
a beast or a tree; in all other capacities he is dead : he nei¬ 
ther hath the intellectual or the spiritual life, neither the 
life of a man nor of a Christian ; and this sad truth lasts 
too long. For old age seizes upon most men, while they 
still retain the minds of boys and vicious youths, doing ac¬ 
tions from principles of great folly, and a mighty igno¬ 
rance, admiring things useless and hurtful, and filling up 
all the dimensions of their abode with businesses of empty 
affairs, being at leisure to attend no virtue : they cannot 
pray, because they are busy, and because they are pas¬ 
sionate : they cannot communicate, because they have 
quarrels and intrigues of perplexed causes, complicated 
hostilities, and things of the world; and therefore they 
cannot attend to the things of God; little considering, 
that they must find a time to die in; when death, comes, 
they must be at leisure for that. Such men are like 
sailors loosing from a port, and tossed immediately with a 
perpetual tempest, lasting till their cordage crack, and 
either they sink, or return back again to the same place : 
did not make a voyage, though they were long at sea. The 
business and impertinent affairs of most men steal all their 
time, and they are restless in a foolish motion: but this is 
not the progress of a man; he is no farther advanced in 


28 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


the course of a life, though he reckon many years; for still 
his soul is childish, and trifling like an untaught boy. 

If the parts of this sad complaint find their remedy, we 
have by the same instruments also cured the evils and the 
vanity of a short life. Therefore, 

1. Be infinitely curious you do not set back your life in 
the accounts of God by the intermingling of criminal ac¬ 
tions, or the contracting vicious habits. There are some 
vices, which carry a sword in their hand, and cut a man off 
before his time. There is a sword of the Lord, and there 
is a sword of a man, and there is a sword of the devil. 
Every vice of our own managing in the matter of carnality, 
of lust or rage, ambition or revenge, is a sword of Satan 
put into the hands of a man: these are the destroying an¬ 
gels ,* sin is the Apollyon, the destroyer that is gone out, 
not from the Lord, but from the tempter; and we hug the 
poison, and twist willingly with the vipers, till they bring 
us into the regions of an irrecoverable sorrow. We use to 
reckon persons as good as dead, if they have lost their limbs 
and their teeth, and are confined to an hospital, and con¬ 
verse with none but surgeons and physicians, mourners 
and divines, those pollinctores , the dressers of bodies and 
souls to funeral: but it is worse when the soul, the prin¬ 
ciple of life, is employed wholly in the offices of death : 
and that man was worse than dead, of whom Seneca tells, 
that being a rich fool, when he was lifted up from the baths 
and set into a soft couch, asked his slaves, An ego jam, sedeo ? 
Do I now sit ? The beast was so drowned in sensuality and 
the death of his soul, that, whether he did sit or no, he was 
to believe another. Idleness and every vice are as much 
of death as a long disease is, or the expense of ten years : 
and “ she, that lives in pleasures, is dead, while she liveth” 
(saith the apostle ;) and it is the style of the Spirit con¬ 
cerning wicked persons, “ they are dead in trespasses and 
sins.” For as every sensual pleasure and every day of 
idleness and useless living lops off a little branch from our 
short life ; so every deadly sin and every habitual vice 
does quite destroy us: but innocence leaves us in our na¬ 
tural portions, and perfect period ; we lose nothing of our 
life if we lose nothing of our soul’s health ; and therefore 
he that would live a full age, must avoid a sin, as he would 
decline the regions of death and the dishonours of the grave. 

2. If we would have our life lengthened, let us begin be- 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


29 

times to live in the accounts of reason and sober counsels, 
of religion and the spirit, and then we shall have no reason 
to complain that our abode on earth is so short: many men 
find it long enough, and indeed it is so to all senses. But 
when we spend in waste what God hath given us in plenty, 
when we sacrifice our youth to folly, our manhood to lust 
and rage, our old age to covetousness and irreligion, not 
beginning to live till we are to die, designing that time to 
virtue which indeed is infirm to every thing and profitable 
to nothing; then we make our lives short, and lust runs 
away with all the vigorous and healthful part of it, and 
pride and animosity steal the manly portion, and crafti¬ 
ness and interest possess old age; velut ex pleno et abun- 
danti perdimus , we spend as if we had too much time, and 
knew not what to do with it: we fear every thing, like 
weak and silly mortals; and desire strangely and greedily, 
as if we were immortal: we complain our life is short, and 
yet we throw away much of it, and are weary of many of 
its parts: we complain the day is long, and the night is 
long, and we want company, and seek out arts to drive 
the time away, and then weep, because it is gone too soon. 
But so the treasure of the capitol is but a small estate, 
when Caesar comes to finger it, and to pay with it all his 
legions: and the revenue of all Egypt and the eastern pro¬ 
vinces was but a little sum, when they were to support the 
luxury of Mark Antony, and feed the riot of Cleopatra; 
but a*thousand crowns is a vast proportion to be spent in 
the cottage of a frugal person, or to feed a hermit. Just so 
is our life: too short to serve the ambition of a haughty 
prince, or an usurping rebel; too little time to purchase 
great wealth, to satisfy the pride of a vain-glorious fool, to 
trample upon all the enemies of our just or unjust inter¬ 
est : but for the obtaining virtue, for the purchase of so¬ 
briety and modesty, for the actions of religion, God gave 
us time sufficient, if we make the “ outgoings of the morn¬ 
ing and evening,” that is, our infancy and old age, to be 
taken into the computations of a man. Which we may 
see in the following particulars. 

1. If our childhood, being first consecrated by forward 
baptism, be seconded by a holy education, and a comply¬ 
ing obedience ; if our youth be chaste and temperate, 
modest and industrious, proceeding through a prudent and 
sober manhood to a religious old age ; then we have lived 
c 2 2 f 2 


30 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


our whole duration, and shall never die, but be changed 
in a just time, to the preparations of a better and an im¬ 
mortal life. 

2. If, besides the ordinary returns of our prayers and 
periodical and festival solemnities, and our seldom com¬ 
munions, we would allow to religion and the studies of 
wisdom those great shares, that are trifled away upon vain 
sorrow, foolish mirth, troublesome ambition, busy covet¬ 
ousness, watchful lust, and impertinent amours, and balls, 
and revellings, and banquets, all that which was spent 
viciously, and all that time that lay fallow, and without 
employment, our life would quickly amount to a great 
sum. Tostatus Abulensis was a very painful person, and 
a great clerk, and in the days of his manhood he wrote 
so many books, and they not ill ones, that the world com¬ 
puted a sheet for every day of his life ; I suppose they 
meant, after he came to the use of reason and the state 
of a man ,* and John Scotus died about the two-and-thir- 
tieth year of his age; and yet besides his public disputa¬ 
tions, his daily lectures of divinity in public and private, 
the books that he wrote, being lately collected and printed 
at Lyons, do equal the number of volumes of any two the 
most voluminous fathers of the Latin church. Every man 
is not enabled to such employments, but every man is 
called and enabled to the works of a sober and a religious 
life; and there are many saints of God, that can reckon as 
many volumes of religion and mountains of piety, as those 
others did of good books. St. Ambrose (and I think, from 
his example, St. Augustine) divided every day into three 
tertias of employment: eight hours he spent in the neces¬ 
sities of nature and recreation ; eight hours in charity and 
doing assistance to others, despatching their businesses, re¬ 
conciling their enmities, reproving their vices, correcting 
their errors, instructing their ignorances, transacting the 
affairs of his diocess; and the other eight hours he spent 
in study and prayer. If we were thus minute and curious 
in the spending our time, it is impossible, but our life would 
seem very long. For so have I seen an amorous person tell 
the minutes of his absence from his fancied joy, and while 
he told the sands of his hour-glass, or the throbs and little 
beatings of his watch, by dividing an hour into so many 
members, he spun out its length by number, and so trans¬ 
lated a day into the tediousness of a month. And if we 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


3: 

tell our days by canonical hours of prayer, our weeks bv a 
constant revolution of fasting-days or days of special de¬ 
votion, and over all these draw a black cypress, a veil of 
penitential sorrow and severe mortification, we shall soon 
answer the calumny and objection of a short life. He that 
governs the day and divides the hours, hastens from the 
eyes and observation of a merry sinner; but loves to stand 
still, and behold, and tell the sighs, and number the groans 
and sadly-delicious accents of a grieved penitent. It is a 
vast work that any man may do, if he never be idle : and it 
is a huge way that a man may go in virtue, if he never goes 
out of his way by a vicious habit or a great crime : and he 
that perpetually reads good books, if his parts be answer- 
able, will have a huge stock of knowledge. It is so in all 
things else. Strive, not to forget your time, and suffer none 
of it to pass undiscerned; and then measure your life, and 
tell me how you find the measure of its abode. However, 
the time we live, is worth the money we pay for it; and 
therefore it is not to be thrown away. 

3. When vicious men are dying, and scared with the 
affrighting truths of an evil conscience, they would give all 
the world for a year, for a month : nay, we read of some 
that called out with amazement, inducias usque ad mane, 
truce but till the morning:—and if that year or some few 
months were given, those men think they could do mira¬ 
cles in it. And let us awhile suppose what Dives would 
have done, if he had been loosed from the pains of hell, and 
permitted to live on earth one year. Would all the plea¬ 
sures of the world have kept him one hour from the temple? 
would he not perpetually have been under the hands of 
priests, or at the feet of the doctors, or by Moses’ chair, or 
attending as near the altar as he could get, or relieving 
poor Lazarus, or praying to God, and crucifying all his 
sins ? I have read of a melancholic person, who saw hell 
but in a dream or vision, and the amazement was such, 
that he would have chosen ten times to die rather than feel 
again so much of that horror: and such a person cannot 
be fancied, but that he would spend a year in such holiness, 
that the religion of a few months would equal the devotion 
of many years, even of a good man. Let us but compute 
the proportions. If we should spend all our years of rea 
son so, as such a person would spend that one, can it be 
thought that life would be short and trifling, in which he 


32 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


had performed such a religion, served God with so much 
holiness, mortified sin with so great a labour, purchased 
virtue at such a rate and so rare an industry ? It must 
needs be, that such a man must die when he ought to die, 
and be like ripe and pleasant fruit falling from a fair tree, 
and gathered into baskets for the planter’s use. He that 
hath done all his business, and is begotten to a glorious 
hope by the seed of an immortal Spirit, can never die too 
soon, nor live too long. 

Xerxes wept sadly, when he saw his army of 2,300,000 
men, because he considered, that, within a hundred years, 
all the youth of that army should be dust and ashes : and 
yet, as Seneca well observes of him, he was the man that 
should bring them to their graves; and he consumed all 
that army in two years, for whom he feared and wept the 
death after a hundred. Just so we do all. We complain, 
that within thirty or forty years, a little more or a great 
deal less, we shall descend again into the bowels of our 
mother, and that our life is too short for any great employ¬ 
ment ; and yet we throw away five-and-thirty years of our 
forty, and the remaining five we divide between art and 
nature, civility and customs, necessity, and convenience, 
prudent counsels and religion: but the portion of the last 
is little and contemptible, and yet that little is all that we 
can prudently account of our lives. We bring that fate and 
that death near us, of whose approach we are so sadly ap¬ 
prehensive. 

4. In taking the accounts of your life, do not reckon by 
great distances, and by the periods of pleasure, or the sa¬ 
tisfaction of your hopes, or the sating your desires : but 
let every intermedial day and hour pass with observation. 
He that reckons he hath lived but so many harvests, thinks 
they come not often enough, and that they go away too 
soon : some lose the day with longing for the night, and the 
night in waiting for the day. Hope and fantastic expec¬ 
tations spend much of our lives; and while with passion we 
look for a coronation, or the death of an enemy, or a day 
of joy, passing from fancy to possession without any inter¬ 
medial notices, we throw away a precious year, and use it 
but as the-burden of our time, fit to be pared off and thrown 
away, that we may come at those little pleasures, which 
first steal our hearts, and then steal our life. 

5. A strict course of piety is the way to prolong our lives 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


33 


in the natural sense, and to add good portions to the num¬ 
ber of our years: and sin is sometimes by natural casualty 
very often by the anger of God, and the Divine judgment 
a cause of sudden and untimely death. Concerning which 
I shall add nothing (to what I have somewhere else said of 
this article,*) but only the observation of Epiphanius; that 
for three thousand three hundred and thirty-two years, even 
to the twentieth age, there was not one example of a son 
that died before his father ; but the course of nature was 
kept, that he who was first born in the descending line, did 
first die (I speak of natural death, and therefore Abel can¬ 
not be opposed to this observation,) till that Terah, the 
father of Abraham taught the people a new religion, to make 
images of clay and worship them ; and concerning him it 
was first remarked, that “ Haran died before his father Te¬ 
rah in the land of his nativity God, by an unheard-of judg¬ 
ment and a rare accident punishing his newly-invented crime 
by the untimely death of his son. 

6. But if I shall describe a living man, a man that hath 
that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird, that 
which gives him a capacity next to angels, we shall find 
that even a good man lives not long, because it is long be¬ 
fore he is born to this life, and longer yet before he hath a 
man’s growth. “He that can look upon death, and see its 
face with the same countenance, with which he hears its 
story ; that can endure all the labours of his life with his 
soul supporting his body ; that can equally despise riches, 
when he hath them, and when he hath them not; that is 
not sadder, if they lie in his neighbour’s trunks, nor more 
brag, if they shine round about his own walls : he that is 
neither moved with good fortune coming to him, nor going 
from him; that can look upon another man’s lands evenly 
and pleasedly, as if they were his own, and yet look upon 
his own, and use them too, just as if they were another 
man’s; that neither spends his goods prodigally and like 
a fool, nor yet keeps them avariciously and like a wretch ; 
that weighs not benefits by weight and number, but by the 
mind and circumstances of him that gives them : that never 
thinks his charity expensive, if a worthy person be the re¬ 
ceiver ; he that does nothing for opinion sake, but every 
thing for conscience, being as curious of his thoughts as 
of his acting in markets and theatres, and is as much in 

* Life of Christ, part iii. Disc. 14. 


64 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


awe of himself as of a whole assembly : he that knows God 
looks on, and contrives his secret affairs as in the presence 
of God and his holy angels; that eats and drinks because 
he needs it, not that he may serve a lust or load his belly : 
he that is bountiful and cheerful to his friends, and charit¬ 
able and apt to forgive his enemies; that loves his coun¬ 
try, and obeys his prince, and desires and endeavours no¬ 
thing more than that he may do honour to Godthis per¬ 
son may reckon his life to be the life of a man, and com 
pute his months, not by the course of the sun, but the zodiac 
and circle of his virtues; because these are such things, 
which fools, and children, and birds, and beasts, cannot 
have ; these are therefore the actions of life, because they 
are the seeds of immortality. That day in which we have 
done some excellent thing, we may as truly reckon to be 
added to our life, as were the fifteen years to the days of 
Hezekiah. 

SECTION IV. 

Consideration of the Miseries of Man's life. 

As our life is very short, so it is very miserable; and there¬ 
fore it is well it is short. God in pity to mankind, lest his 
burden should be insupportable, and his nature an intoler¬ 
able load, hath reduced our state of misery to an abbrevia¬ 
ture ; and the greater our misery is, the less while it is like 
to last: the sorrows of a man’s spirit being like ponderous 
weights, which, by the greatness of their burden, make a 
swifter motion, and descend into the grave to rest and ease 
our wearied limbs ; for then only we shall sleep quietly, 
when those fetters are knocked off, which not only bound 
our souls in prison, but also ate the flesh, till the very bones 
opened the secret garments of their cartilages, discovering 
their nakedness and sorrow. 

1. Here is no place to sit down in, but you must rise as 
soon as you are set, for we have gnats in our chambers, 
and worms in our gardens, and spiders and flies in the 
palaces of the greatest kings. How few men in the world 
are prosperous ! What an infinite number of slaves and 
beggars, of persecuted and oppressed people, fill all corners 
of the earth with groans, and heaven itself with weeping 
prayers, and sad remembrances ! How many provinces 
and kingdoms are afflicted by a violent war, or made deso¬ 
late by popular diseases! Some whole countries are re 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


35 


marked with fatal evils, or periodical sicknesses. Grand 
Cairo in Egypt feels the plague every three years returning 
like a quartan ague, and destroying many thousands of 
persons. All the inhabitants of Arabia the -Desert are in a 
continual fear of being buried in huge heaps of sand, and 
therefore dwell in tents and ambulatory houses, or retire to 
unfruitful mountains, to prolong an uneasy and wilder life. 
And all the countries round about the Adriatic sea feel such 
violent convulsions by tempests and intolerable earthquakes, 
that sometimes whole cities find a tomb, and every man 
sinks with his own house made ready to become his monu¬ 
ment, and his bed is crushed into the disorders of a grave. 
Was not all the world drowned at one deluge, and breach 
of the Divine anger? And shall not all the world again 
be destroyed by fire ? Are there not many thousands that 
die every night, and that groan and weep sadly every day ? 
But what shall we think of that great evil, which for the 
sins of man God hath suffered to possess the greatest part 
of mankind ? Most of the men that are now alive, or that 
have been living for many ages, are Jews, Heathens, or 
Turks: and God was pleased to suffer a base epileptic 
person, a villain and a vicious, to set up a religion which 
hath filled all the nearer parts of Asia, and much of Africa, 
and some part of Europe ; so that the greatest number of 
men and women born in so many kingdoms and provinces 
are infallibly made Mahometan, strangers and enemies to 
Christ, by whom alone we can be saved. This considera¬ 
tion is extremely sad, when we remember how universal 
and how great an evil it is, that so many millions of sons 
and daughters are born to enter into the possession of 
devils to eternal ages. These evils are the miseries of 
great parts of mankind, and we cannot easily consider 
more particularly the evils which happen to us, being the 
inseparable affections or incidents to the whole nature of 
man. 

2. We find, that all the women in the world are either 
born for barrenness or the pains of childbirth, and yet this 
is one of our greatest blessings; but such indeed are the 
blessings of this world, we cannot be well with, nor with¬ 
out many things. Perfumes make our heads ache, roses 
prick our fingers; and in our very blood, where our life 
dwells, is the scene, under which nature acts many sharp 
fevers and heavy sicknesses. Jt were too sad, if I should 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


36 

tell how many persons are afflicted with evil spirits, with 
spectres and illusions of the night; and that huge multi¬ 
tudes of men and women live upon man’s flesh; nay, worse 
yet, upon the sins of men, upon the sins of their sons and 
of their daughters, and they pay their souls down for the 
bread they eat, buying this day’s meal with the price ot the 
last night’s sin. 

3. Or if you please in charity to visit an hospital, which 
is indeed a map of the whole world, there you shall see the 
effects of Adam’s sin, and the ruins of human nature; bo¬ 
dies laid up in heaps like the bones of a destroyed town, 
homines precarii spiritus et male hcerentis , men whose souls 
seem to be borrowed, and are kept there by art and the 
force of medicine ; whose miseries are so great, that few 
people have charity or humanity enough to visit them, fewer 
have the heart to dress them, and we pity them in civility 
or with a transient prayer, but we do not feel their sorrows 
by the mercies of a religious pity; and therefore as we 
leave their sorrows in many degrees unrelieved and uneased, 
so we contract by our unmercifulness a guilt, by which our¬ 
selves become liable to the same calamities. Those many 
that need pity, and those infinities of people that refuse to 
pity, are miserable upon a several charge, but yet they al¬ 
most make up all mankind. 

4. All wicked men are in love with that which entangles 
them in huge varieties of troubles; they are slaves to the 
worst of masters, to sin and to the devil, to a passion, and 
to an imperious woman. Good men are for ever persecuted, 
and God chastises every son whom he receives, and what¬ 
soever is easy is trifling and worth nothing, and whatsoever 
is excellent is not to be obtained without labour and 
sorrow; and the conditions and states of men, that are 
free from great cares, are such, as have in them nothing 
rich and orderly, and those that have, are stuck full of 
thorns and trouble. Kings are full of care ; and learned 
men in all ages have been observed to be very poor, et ho- 
nestas miserias accusant , they complain of their honest 
miseries. 

5. But these evils are notorious and confessed ; even 
they also, whose felicity men stare at and admire, besides 
their splendour and the sharpness of their light, will, with 
their appendent sorrows, wring a tear from the most re¬ 
solved eye: for not only the winter quarter is full of storms 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


37 


and cold, and darkness; but the beauteous spring hath 
blasts and sharp frosts; the fruitful teeming summer is 
melted with heat, and burnt with the kisses of the sun, hex 
friend, and choked with dust; and the rich autumn is full 
of sickness ; and we are weary of that which we enjoy, 
because sorrow is its biggest portion : and when we remem¬ 
ber, that upon the fairest face is placed one of the worst 
sinks of the body, the nose, we may use it not only as a 
mortification to the pride of beauty, but as an allay to the 
fairest outside of condition which any of the sons and 
daughters of Adam do possess. For look upon kings and 
conquerors: I will not tell that many of them fall into the 
condition of servants, and their subjects rule over them, 
and stand upon the ruins of their families, and that to such 
persons the sorrow is bigger than usually happens in 
smaller fortunes : but let us suppose them still conquerors, 
and see what a goodly purchase they get by all their pains 
and amazing fears, and continual dangers. They carry 
their arms beyond Ister, and pass the Euphrates, and bind 
the Germans with the bounds of the river Rhine ; I speak 
in the style of the Roman greatness; for novv-a-days the 
biggest fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty 
province or two, and a hill confines the progress of their 
prosperity, or a river checks it; but whatsoever tempts the 
pride and vanity of ambitious persons, is not so big as the 
smallest star, which we see scattered in disorder and unre¬ 
garded upon the pavement and floor of heaven. And if 
we would suppose the pismires had but our understandings, 
they also would have the method of a man’s greatness, and 
divide their little mole-hills into provinces and exarchates: 
and if they also grew as vicious and as miserable, one of 
their princes would lead an army out, and kill his neigh¬ 
bour ants, that he might reign over the next handful of a 
turf. But then, if we consider, at what price and with what 
felicity all this is purchased, the sting of the painted snake 
will quickly appear, and the fairest of their fortunes will 
properly enter into this account of human infelicities. 

We may guess at it by the constitution of Agustus’s 
fortune, who struggled for his power, first, with the Roman 
citizens, then with Brutus and Cassius, and all the fortune 
of the republic; then with his colleague Mark Antony; 
then with his kindred and nearest relatives; and after he 
was wearied with slaughter of the Romans, before he could 
d 2G 


38 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


sit down and rest in his imperial chair, he was lorced to 
carry armies into Macedonia, Galatia, beyond Euphrates, 
Rhine, and Danubius : and when he dwelt at home in 
greatness and within the circles of a mighty power, he 
hardly escaped the sword of the Egnatii, of Lepidus, 
Csepio, and Murana: and after he had entirely reduced 
the felicity and grandeur into his own family, his daughter, 
his only child, conspired with many of the young nobility, 
and being joined with adulterous complications, as with 
an impious sacrament, they affrighted and destroyed the 
fortune of the old man, and wrought him more sorrow than 
all the troubles that were hatched in the baths and beds of 
Egypt, between Antony and Cleopatra. This was the 
greatest fortune that the world had then or ever since, 
and therefore we cannot expect it to be better in a less 
prosperity. 

6. The prosperity of this world is so infinitely soured 
with the overflowing of evils, that he is counted the most 
happy, who hath the fewest; all conditions being evil and 
miserable, they are only distinguished by the number of 
calamities. The collector of the Roman and foreign ex¬ 
amples, when he had reckoned two-and-twenty instances 
of great fortunes, every one of which had been allayed 
with great variety of evils: in all his reading or experience, 
he could tell but of two, who had been famed for an entire 
prosperity, Quintus Metellus, and Gyges the king of Lydia; 
and yet concerning the one of them he tells, that his feli¬ 
city was so inconsiderable (and yet it was the bigger of the 
two) that the oracle said, that Aglaus Sophidius, the poor 
Arcadian shepherd, was more happy than he ,* that is, he 
had fewer troubles; for so indeed we are to reckon the 
pleasures of this life ; the limit of our joy is the absence of 
some degree of sorrow; and he that hath the least of this, 
is the most prosperous person. But then we must look 
for prosperity, not in palaces or courts of princes, not in the 
tents of conquerors, or in the gaieties of fortunate and pre¬ 
vailing sinners; but something rather in the cottages of 
honest, innocent, and contented persons, whose mind is no 
bigger than their fortune, nor their virtue less than their 
security. As for others, whose fortune looks bigger, and 
allures fools to follow it like the wandering fires of the 
night, till they run into rivers, or are broken upon rocks 
with starting and running after them, they are all in the 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


39 

condition of Marius, than whose condition nothing was 
more constant, and nothing more mutable ; if we reckon 
them amongst the happy, they are the most happy men; 
if we reckon them amongst the miserable, they are the 
most miserable. For just as is a man’s condition, great 
or little, so is the state of his misery : all have their share ; 
but kings and princes, great generals and consuls, rich 
men and mighty, as they have the biggest business and the 
biggest charge, and are answerable to God for the greatest 
accounts, so they have the biggest trouble; that the un¬ 
easiness of their appendage may divide the good and evil 
of the world, making the poor man’s fortune as eligible as 
the greatest; and also restraining the vanity of man’s 
spirit, which a great fortune is apt to swell from a vapour 
to a bubble; but God in mercy hath mingled wormwood 
with their wine, and so restrained the drunkenness and 
follies of prosperity. 

7. Man never hath one day to himself of entire peace 
from the things of the world, but either something trou¬ 
bles him, or nothing satisfies him, or his very fulness 
swells him, and makes him breathe short upon his bed. 
Men’s joys are troublesome ; and besides that, the fear of 
losing them, takes away the present pleasure, (and a man 
hath need of another felicity to preserve this,) they are also 
wavering and full of trepidation, not only from their incon¬ 
stant nature, but from their weak foundation: they arise 
from vanity, and they dwell upon ice, and they converse 
with the wind, and they have the wings of a bird, and are 
serious but as the resolutions of a child, commenced by 
chance, and managed by folly, and proceed by inadver¬ 
tency, and end in vanity and forgetfulness. So that as 
Livius Drusus said of himself, he never had any play-days, 
or days of quiet when he was a boy; for he was trouble¬ 
some and busy, a restless and unquiet man ; the same may 
every man observe to be true of himself: he is always rest¬ 
less and uneasy, he dwells upon the waters, and leans upon 
thorns, and lays his head upon a sharp stone. 

SECTION V. 

This Consideration reduced to Practice . 

1. The effect of this consideration is this, that the sad¬ 
nesses of this life help to sweeten the bitter cup of death. 
For let our life be never so long, if our strength were great 


40 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 


as that of oxen and camels, if our sinews were strong' aa 
the cordage at the foot of an oak, if we were as fighting 
and prosperous people as Siccius Dentatus, who was on 
the prevailing side in a hundred and twenty battles, who 
had three hundred and twelve public rewards assigned him 
by his generals and princes, for his valour and conduct in 
sieges and sharp encounters; and, besides all this, had his 
share in nine triumphs; yet still the period shall be, that 
all this shall end in death, and the people shall talk of us 
awhile, good or bad, according as we deserve, or as they 
please ; and once it shall come to pass, that concerning 
every one of us, it shall be told in the neighbourhood that 
we are dead. This we are apt to think a sad story ; but 
therefore let us help it with a sadder ; for we therefore need 
not be much troubled, that we shall die, because we are 
not here in ease, nor do we dwell in a fair condition; but 
our days are full of sorrow and anguish, dishonoured, and 
made unhappy with many sins, with a frail and a foolish 
spirit, entangled with difficult cases of conscience, ensnared 
with passions, amazed with fears, full of cares, divided with 
curiosities and contradictory interests, made airy and im¬ 
pertinent with vanities, abused with ignorance and pro¬ 
digious errors, made ridiculous with a thousand weak¬ 
nesses, worn away with labours, loaden with diseases, 
daily vexed with dangers and temptations, and in love with 
misery; we are weakened with delights, afflicted with want, 
with the evils of myself and of all my family, and with the 
sadnesses of all my friends, and of all good men, even of 
the whole church ; and therefore, methinks, we need not be 
troubled, that God is pleased to put an end to all these 
troubles, and to let them sit down in a natural period, 
which, if we please, may be to us the beginning of a better 
life. When the Prince of Persia wept because his army 
should all die in the revolution of an age, Artabanus told 
him that they should all meet with evils so many and so 
great, that every man of them should wish himself dead 
long before that. Indeed it were a sad thing to be cut of 
the stone, and we that are in health, tremble to think of it; 
but the man that is wearied with the disease, looks upon 
that sharpness as upon his cure and remedy: and as none 
need to have a tooth drawn, so none could well endure it, 
but he that hath felt the pain of it in his head: so is our 
life so full of evils, that therefore death is no evil to them. 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH 


41 

that have felt the smart of this, or hope for the joys of a 
better. 

2. But as it helps to ease a certain sorrow, as a fire 
draws out fire, and a nail drives forth a nail; so it instructs 
us in a present duty, that is, that we should not be so fond 
of a perpetual storm, nor doat upon the transient gauds 
and gilded thorns of this world. They are not worth a pas¬ 
sion, nor worth a sigh or a groan, not of the price of one 
night’s watching; and therefore they are mistaken and 
miserable persons, who, since Adam planted thorns round 
about paradise, are more in love with that hedge than all 
the fruits of the garden, sottish admirers of things that hurt 
them, of sweet poisons, gilded daggers, and silken halters. 
Tell them they have lost a bounteous friend, a rich pur¬ 
chase, a fair farm, a wealthy donative, and you dissolve 
their patience : it is an evil bigger than their spirit can bear: 
it brings sickness and death: they can neither eat nor sleep 
with such a sorrow. But if you represent to them the evils 
of a vicious habit, and the dangers of a state of sin; if you 
tell them they have displeased God, and interrupted their 
hopes of heaven; it may be they will be so civil as to hear 
it patiently, and to treat you kindly, and first to commend, 
and then forget your story, because they prefer this world 
with all its sorrows before the pure unmingled felicities of 
heaven. But it is strange, that any man should be so pas¬ 
sionately in love with the thorns that grow on his own 
ground, that he should wear them for armlets, and knit 
them in his shirt, and prefer them before a kingdom and 
immortality. No man loves this world the better for his 
being poor; but men that love it, because they have great 
possessions, love it because it is troublesome and charge¬ 
able, full of noise and temptation, because it is unsafe and 
ungoverned, flattered and abused; and he that considers 
the troubles of an over-long garment and of a crammed 
stomach, a trailing gown and a loaden table, may justly un¬ 
derstand that all that, for which men are so passionate, is 
their hurt, and their objection, that which a temperate man 
would avoid, and a wise man cannot love. 

He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if he be in 
love with this world, we need not despair but that a witty 
man might reconcile him with tortures, and make him 
think charitably of the rack, and be brought to dwell with 
vipers and dragons, and entertain his guests with the 
d 2 2 g 2 


42 


GENERAL EXERCISER 


shrieks of mandrakes, cats, and screech-owls, with the 
filing of iron, and the harshness of rending of silk, or to 
admire the harmony that is made by a herd of evening 
wolves, when they miss their draught of blood in their 
midnight revels. The groans oi a man in a fit of the stone 
are worse than all these; and the distractions of a troubled 
conscience are worse than those groans; and yet a careless 
merry sinner is worse than all that. But if we could from 
one of the battlements of heaven espy, how many men and 
women at this time lie fainting and dying for want of bread, 
how many young men are hewn down by the sword of war, 
how many poor orphans are now weeping over the graves 
of their father, by whose life they were enabled to eat: if we 
could but hear how many mariners and passengers are at 
this present in a storm, and shriek out because their keel 
dashes against a rock, or bulges under them, how many 
people there are that weep with want, and are mad with 
oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense of a con¬ 
stant infelicity; in all reason we should be glad to be out 
of the noise and participation of so many evils. This is a 
place of sorrows and tears, of great evils and a constant ca¬ 
lamity : let us remove from hence, at least in affections and 
preparations of mind. 

CHAPTER II. 

A GENERAL PREPARATION TOWARDS A HOLY AND BLESSED 

death; by way of exercise 
SECTION I. 

Three Precepts preparatory to a Holy Death , to he prac¬ 
tised in our whole life . 

1. He that would die well, must always look for death, 
every day knocking at the gates of the grave: and then the 
gates of the grave shall never prevail upon him to do him 
mischief. This was the advice of all the wise and good 
men of the world, who, especially in the days and periods of 
their joy and festival egressions, chose to throw some ashes 
into their chalices, some sober remembrances of their fatal 
period. Such was the black shirt of Saladine, the tomb¬ 
stone presented to the Emperor of Constantinople on his 
coronation-day ; the Bishop of Rome’s two reeds with flax 
and a wax-taper; the Egyptian skeleton served up at 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


43 

feasts; and Trimalcion’s banquet in Petronius, in which 
was brought in the image of a dead man’s bones of silver, 
with spondyles exactly turning to every of the guests, and 
iaying to every one, that you and you must die, and look 
not one upon another, for every one is equally concerned 
m this sad representment. These in fantastic semblances 
declare a severe counsel, and useful meditation; and it is 
not easy for a man to be gay in his imagination, or to be 
drunk with joy or wine, pride or revenge, who considers 
sadly, that he must, ere long, dwell in a house of darkness 
and dishonour, and his body must be the inheritance of 
worms, and his soul must be what he pleases, even as a 
man makes it here by his living good or bad. I have read 
of a young hermit, who, being passionately in love with a 
young lady, could not, by all the arts of religion and mor¬ 
tification, suppress the trouble of that fancy, till at last 
being told that she was dead, and had been buried about 
fourteen days, he went secretly to her vault, and with the 
skirt of his mantle wiped the moisture from the carcass, 
and still at the return of his temptation laid it before him, 
saying, Behold, this is the beauty of the woman thou didst 
so much desire: and so the man found his cure. And if 
we make death as present to us, our own death, dwelling 
and dressed in all its pomp of fancy and proper circum¬ 
stances ; if any thing will quench the heats of lust, or the 
desires of money, or the greedy passionate affections of this 
world, this must do it. But withal, the frequent use of this 
meditation, by curing our present inordinations, will make 
death safe and friendly, and by its very custom will make, 
that the king of terrors shall come to us without his affright¬ 
ing dresses; and that we shall sit down in the grave as we 
compose ourselves to sleep, and do the duties of nature 
and choice. The old people that lived near the Riphgean 
mountains, were taught to converse with death, and to han¬ 
dle it on all sides, and to discourse of it, as of a thing that 
will certainly come, and ought so to do. Thence their 
minds and resolutions became capable of death, and they 
thought it a dishonourable thing, with greediness to keep 
a life that must go from us, to lay aside its thorns, and to 
return again circled with a glory and a diadem. 

2. “ He that would die well, must, all the days of his 
life, lay up against the day of death not only by the 
general provisions of holiness and a pious life indefinitely 



GENERAL EXERCISES 


44 

but provisions proper to the necessities of that great day 
of expense, in which a man is to throw his last cast for an 
eternity of joys or sorrows; ever remembering, that this 
alone, well performed, is not enough to pass us into Para¬ 
dise ; but that alone, done foolishly, is enough to send us 
to hell : and the want of either a holy life or death makes 
a man to fall short of the mighty price of our high calling. 
In order to this rule, we are to consider what special graces 
we shall then need to exercise, and bv the proper arts of 
the spirit, by a heap of proportioned arguments, by prayers 
and a great treasure of devotion laid up in heaven, provide 
beforehand a reserve of strength and mercy. Men in the 
course of their lives walk lazily and incuriously, as if they 
had both their feet in one shoe : and when they are pas¬ 
sively revolved to the time of their dissolution, they have 
no mercies in store, no patience, no faith, no charity to 
God, or despite of the world, being without gust or appetite 
for the land of their inheritance, which Christ with so much 
pain and blood had purchased for them. When we come 
to die indeed, we shall be very much put to it to stand firm 
upon the two feet of a Christian, faith and patience. When 
we ourselves are to use the articles, to turn our former dis¬ 
courses into present practice, and to feel what we never 
felt before, we shall find it to be quite another thing, to be 
willing presently to quit this life and all our present pos¬ 
sessions for the hopes of a thing, which we were never 
suffered to see, and such a thing, of which we may fail so 
many ways, and of which if we fail any way, we are miser¬ 
able for ever. Then we shall find, how much we have need 
to have secured the Spirit of God and the grace of faith, 
by an habitual, perfect, unmoveable resolution. The same 
also is the case of patience, which will be assaulted with 
sharp pains, disturbed fancies, great fears, want of a pre¬ 
sent mind, natural weaknesses, frauds of the devil, and a 
thousand accidents and imperfections. It concerns us 
therefore highly, in the whole course of our lives, not only 
to accustom ourselves to a patient suffering of injuries and 
affronts, of persecutions and losses, of cross accidents and 
unnecessary circumstances ; but also by representing death 
as present to us, to consider with what arguments then to 
fortify our patience, and by assiduous and fervent prayer 
to God all our life long to call upon him to give us patience 
and great assistances, a strong faith and a confirmed hope 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


45 


the Spirit of God and his holy angels assistants at that 
time, to resist and to subdue the devil’s temptations and 
assaults; and so to fortify our heart, that it break not into 
intolerable sorrows and impatience, and end in wretched¬ 
ness and infidelity. But this is to be the work of our life, 
and not to be done at once; but, as God gives us time, by 
succession, by parts and little periods. For it is very re¬ 
markable, that God who giveth plenteously to all creatures, 
he hath scattered the firmament with stars, as a man sows 
corn in his fields, in a multitude bigger than the capacities 
of human order ; he hath made so much variety of crea¬ 
tures, and gives us great choice of meats and drinks, al¬ 
though any one of both kinds would have served our needs,* 
and so in all instances of nature; yet in the distribution 
of our time God seems to be strait-handed, and gives it to 
us, not as nature gives us rivers, enough to drown us, but 
drop by drop, minute after minute, so that we never can 
have two minutes together, but he takes away one when 
he gives us another. This should teach us to value our 
time, since God so values it, and by his so small distribu¬ 
tion of it, tells us it is the most precious thing we have. 
Since therefore, in the day of our death, we can have still 
but the same little portion of this precious time, let us in 
every minute of our life, I mean, in every discernible por¬ 
tion, lay up such a stock of reason and good works, that 
they may convey a value to the imperfect and shorter ac¬ 
tions of our death-bed ,* while God rewards the piety of 
our lives by his gracious acceptation and benediction upon 
the actions preparatory to our death-bed. 

3. He that desires to die well and happily, above all 
things, must be careful that he do not live a soft, a deli¬ 
cate, and a voluptuous life ; but a life severe, holy, and 
under the discipline of the cross, under the conduct of 
prudence and observation, a life of warfare and sober 
counsels, labour and watchfulness. No man wants cause 
of tears and a daily sorrow. Let every man consider what 
he feels, and acknowledge his misery; let him confess his 
sin, and chastise it; let him bear his cross patiently, and 
his persecutions nobly, and his repentances willingly and 
constantly ; let him pity the evils of all the world, and bear 
his share of the calamities of his brother; let him long and 
sigh for the joys of heaven ; let him tremble and fear, be¬ 
cause he hath deserved the pains of hell; let him commute 



46 


GENERAL EXERCISES 


his eternal ear with a temporal suffering, preventing God’s 
judgment by passing one of his own; let him groan for 
the labours of his pilgrimage, and the dangers of his war¬ 
fare : and by that time he hath summed up all these la¬ 
bours, and duties, and contingencies, all the proper causes, 
instruments, and acts of sorrow, he will find, that for a 
secular joy and wantonness of spirit there are not left 
paany void spaces of his life. It was St. James’s advice,* 
“Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be 
turned into mourning, and your joy into weepingand 
Bonaventure, in the Life of Christ, reports, that the holy 
Virgin-mother said to St. Elizabeth, that grace does not 
descend into the soul of a man but by prayer and affliction. 
Certain it is, that a mourning spirit and an afflicted body 
are great instruments of reconciling God to a sinner, and 
they always dwell at the gates of atonement and restitu¬ 
tion. But besides this, a delicate and prosperous life is 
hugely contrary to the hopes of a blessed eternity. “ Woe 
be to them that are at ease in Sion,”f so it was said of old ; 
and our blessed Lord said, “ Woe be to you that laugh, for 
ye shall weep: ^ but, blessed are they that mourn; for 
they shall be comforted.”§ Here or hereafter we must 
have our portion of sorrows. “ He that now goeth on his 
way weeping, and beareth forth good seed with him, shall 
doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with 
him.” || And certainly he that sadly considers the portion 
of Dives, and remembers that the account which Abraham 
gave him for the unavoidableness of his torment was, be¬ 
cause he had his good things in this life, must, in all rea¬ 
son, with trembling run from a course of banquets, and 
faring deliciously every day, as being a dangerous estate, 
and a consignation to an evil greater than all danger, the 
pains and torments of unhappy souls. If either by patience 
or repentance, by compassion or persecution, by choice or 
by conformity, by severity or discipline, we allay the festi¬ 
val follies of a soft life, and profess under the cross of 
Christ, we shall more willingly and more safely enter into 
our grave : but the death-bed of a voluptuous nlan up¬ 
braids his little and cozening prosperities, and exacts pains 
made sharper by the passing from soft beds, and a softer 
mind. He that would die holily and happily, must in this 
world love tears, humility, solitude, and repentance. 

* Chap. iv. 9 + Amor. vi. 1. j Luke vi. 25. $ Matt. v. 4. || Psal. cxxvi. 6. 


47 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 

SECTION II. 

Of daily Examination of our Actions , m the whole course 
of our Health , preparatory to our Death-bed. 

He that will die well and happily, must dress his soul by 
a diligent, and frequent scrutiny : he must perfectly under¬ 
stand and watch the state of his soul; he must set. his 
house in order, before he be fit to die. And for this there 
is great reason, and great necessity. 

Reasons for a daily Examination. 

1. For, if we consider the disorders of every day, the 
multitude of impertinent words, the great portions of time 
spent in vanity, the daily omissions of duty, the coldness 
of our prayers, the indifference of our spirit in holy things, 
the uncertainty of our secret purposes, our infinite decep¬ 
tions and hypocrisies, sometimes not known, very often not 
observed by ourselves, our want of charity, our not knowing 
in how many degrees of action and purpose every virtue is 
to be exercised, the secret adherences of pride, and too 
forward* complacency in our best actions, our failings in 
all our relations, the niceties of difference between some 
virtues and some vices, the secret undiscernable passages 
from lawful to unlawful in the first instances of change, the 
perpetual mistakings of permissions for duty, and licentious 
practices for permissions, our daily abusing the liberty that 
God gives us, our unsuspected sins in the managing a 
course of life certainly lawful, our little greediness in eat¬ 
ing, our surprises in the proportions of our drinkings, our 
too great freedoms and fondnesses in lawful loves, our apt¬ 
ness for things sensual, and our deadness and tediousness 
of spirit in spiritual employments ; besides infinite variety 
of cases of conscience that do occur in the life of every man, 
and in all intercourses of every life, and that the produc¬ 
tions of sin are numerous and increasing, like the families 
of the northern people, or the genealogies of the first pa¬ 
triarchs of the world: from all this we shall find, that the 
computations of a man’s life are busy as the tables of sines 
and tangents, and intricate as the accounts of eastern 
merchants : and therefore it were but reason, we should 
sum up our accounts at the foot of every page, I mean, that 
we call ourselves to scrutiny every night, when we compose 
ourselves to the little images of death. 

2. For, if we make but one general account, and never 


48 


GENERAL EXERCISES 


reckon till we die, either we shall only reckon by great 
sums, and remember nothing but clamorous and crying 
sins, and never consider concerning particulars, or forget 
very many; or if we could consider all that we ought, we 
must needs be confounded with the multitude and variety. 
But if we observe all the little passages of our life, and re¬ 
duce them into the order of accounts and accusations, we 
shall find them multiply so fast, that it will not only appear 
to be an ease to the accounts of our death-bed, but by the 
instrument of shame will restrain the inundation of evils; it 
being a thing intolerable to human modesty, to see sins in¬ 
crease so fast, and virtues grow up so slow; to see every 
day stained with the spots of leprosy, or sprinkled with the 
marks of a lesser evil. 

r 3. It is not intended we should take accounts of our lives 
only to be thought religious, but that we may see our evil 
and amend it, that we dash our sins against the stones, that 
we may go to God, and to a spiritual guide, and search for 
remedies, and apply them. And indeed no man can well 
observe his own growth in grace, but by accounting seldomer 
returns of sin, and a more frequent victory over temptations; 
concerning which every man makes his observations, ac¬ 
cording as he makes his inquiries and search after himself. 
In order to this it was that St. Paul wrote, before receiving 
the holy sacrament, “Let a man examine himself, and so 
let him eat.” This precept was given in those days, when 
they communicated every day; and -therefore a daily ex- 
ami nation also was intended. 

4. And it will appear highly fitting, if we remember, that, 
at the day of judgment, not only the greatest lines of life, but 
every branch and circumstance of every action, every word 
and thought, shall be called to scrutiny and severe judg¬ 
ment : insomuch that it was a great truth which one said, 
Wo be to the most innocent life, if God should search into 
it without mixtures of mercy. And therefore we are here 
to follow St. Paul’s advice, “ Judge yourselves, and you 
shall not be judged of the Lord.” The way to prevent 
God’s anger is to be angry with ourselves; and by examin¬ 
ing our actions, and condemning the criminal, by being 
assessors in God’s tribunal, at least we shall obtain the 
favour of the court. As therefore every night we must 
make our bed the memorial of our grave, so let our evening 
thoughts be an image of the day o f Judgment. 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH 


49 


5. This advice was so reasonable and proper an instru¬ 
ment of virtue, that it was taught even to the scholars of 
Pythagoras by their master : “ Let not sleep seize upon the 
regions of your senses, before you have three times recalled 
the conversation and accidents of the day.” Examine 
what you have committed against the Divine law, what you 
have omitted of your duty, and in what you have made use 
of the Divine grace to the purposes of virtue and religion; 
joining the judge, reason, to the legislative mind or con¬ 
science, that God may reign there as a lawgiver and a 
judge. Then Christ’s kingdom is set up in our hearts: then 
we always live in the eye of our Judge, and live by the 
measures of reason, religion, and sober counsels. 

The benefits we shall receive by practising this advice, in 
order to a blessed death, will also add to the account of 
reason and fair inducements. 

The Benefits of this Exercise. 

1. By a daily examination of our actions, we shall the 
easier cure a great sin, and prevent its arrival to become 
habitual. For to examine, we suppose to be a relative 
duty, and instrumental to something else. We examine 
ourselves, that we may find out our failings and cure them; 
and therefore if we use our remedy when the wound is fresh 
and bleeding, we shall find the cure more certain and less 
painful. For so a taper, when its crown of flame is newly 
blown off, retains a nature so symbolical to light, that it 
will with greediness rekindle and snatch a ray from the 
neighbouring fire. So is the soul of man, when it is newly 
fallen into sin ; although God be angry with it, and the 
state of God’s favour and its own graciousness is inter¬ 
rupted, yet the habit is not naturally changed; and still 
God leaves some roots of virtue standing, and the man is 
modest, or apt to be made ashamed, and he is not grown 
a bold sinner; but if he sleeps on it, and returns again to 
the same sin, and by degrees grows in love with it, and 
gets the custom, and the strangeness of it is taken away, 
then it is his master, and is swelled into a heap, and is 
abetted by use, and corroborated by newly-entertained 
principles, and is insinuated into his nature, and hath pos¬ 
sessed his affections, and tainted the will and the under¬ 
standing : and by this time, a man is in the state of a de¬ 
caying merchant, his accounts are so great, and so intri 
e 2 H 


GENERAL EXERCISES 


50 

cate, and so much in arrear, that to examine it will be but 
to represent the particulars of his calamity ; therefore they 
think it better to pull the napkin before their eyes than tc 
stare upon the circumstances of their death. 

2. A daily or frequent examination of the parts of our life 
will interrupt the proceeding and hinder the journey of 
little sins into a heap. For many days do not pass the 
best persons, in which they have not many idle words or 
vainer thoughts to sully the fair whiteness of their souls ; 
some indiscreet passions or trifling purposes, some imper¬ 
tinent discontents or unhandsome usages of their own per¬ 
sons or their dearest relatives. And though God is not 
extreme to mark what is done amiss, and therefore puts 
these upon the accounts of his mercy, and the title of the 
cross; yet in two cases these little sins combine and clus¬ 
ter ; and, we know, that grapes were once in so great a 
bunch, that one cluster was the load of two men: that is, 
1. When either we are in love with small sins ; or, 2. When 
they proceed from a careless and incurious spirit into fre¬ 
quency and continuance. For so the smallest atoms that 
dance in all the little cells of the world are so trifling and 
immaterial, that they cannot trouble an eye, nor vex the 
tenderest part of a wound where a barbed arrow dwelt; 
yet, when by their infinite numbers, (as Melissa and Par¬ 
menides affirm,) they danced first into order, then into 
little bodies, at last they made the matter of the world : so 
are the little indiscretions of our life : they are always in¬ 
considerable, if they be considered, and contemptible, if 
they be not despised, and God does not regard them, if we 
do. We may easily keep them asunder by our daily or 
nightly thoughts, and prayers, and severe sentences; but 
even the least sand can check the tumultuous pride, and 
become a limit to the sea, when it is in a heap and in united 
multitudes ; but if the wind scatter and divide them, the 
little drops and the vainer froth of the water begin to in¬ 
vade the strand. Our sighs can scatter such little offences; 
but then be sure to breathe such accents frequently, lest 
they knot, and combine, and grow big as the shore, and we 
perish in sand, in trifling instances. “ He that despiseth 
little things, shall perish by little and littleso said the 
son of Sirach.* 

3. A frequent examination of our actions will intenerate 

* Eccles. xix. 1. 



PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


51 


and soften our consciences, so that they shall be impatient 
of any rudeness or heavier load: and he that is used to 
shrink, when he is pressed with a branch of twining osier, 
will not willingly stand in the ruins of a house, when the 
beam dashes upon the pavement. And provided that our 
nice and tender spirit, be not vexed into scruple, nor the 
scruple turn into unreasonable fears, nor the fears into su¬ 
perstition ; he, that, by any arts, can make his spirit tender 
and apt for religious impression, hath made the fairest seat 
for religion, and the unaptest and uneasiest entertainment 
for sin and eternal doath, in the whole world. 

4. A frequent examination of the smallest parts of our 
lives is the best instrument to make our repentance parti¬ 
cular, and a fit remedy to all the members of the whole 
body of sin. For our examination, put off to our death¬ 
bed, of necessity brings us into this condition, that very 
many thousands of our sins must be (or not be at all) washed 
off with a general repentance, which, the more general and 
indefinite it is, it is ever so much the worse. And if he 
that repents the longest and the oftenest, and upon the 
most instances, is still, during his whole life, but an im¬ 
perfect penitent, and there are very many reserves left to 
be wiped off by God’s mercies, and to be eased by collateral 
assistances, or to be groaned for at the terrible day of judg¬ 
ment ; it will be but a sad story to consider, that the sins 
of a whole life, or of very great portions of it, shall be put 
upon the remedy of one examination, and the advices of one 
discourse, and the activities of a decayed body, and a weak 
and an amazed spirit. Let us do the best we can, we shall 
find that the mere sins of ignorance and unavoidable for¬ 
getfulness will be enough to be intrusted to such a bank; 
and that if a general repentance will serve towards their 
expiation, it will be an infinite mercy : but we have nothing 
to warrant our confidence, if we shall think it to be enough 
on our death-bed to confess the notorious actions of our 
lives, and to say, “ The Lord be merciful to me for the infi¬ 
nite transgressions of my life, which I have wilfully or 
carelessly forgotfor very many, of which the repent¬ 
ance, the distinct, particular, circumstantiate repentance of 
a whole life would have been too little, if we could have 
done more. 

5. After the enumeration of these advantages, I shall 
not need to add, that if we decline or refuse to call our- 


52 


GENERAL EXERCISES 


selves frequently to account, and to use daily advices con¬ 
cerning the state of our souls, it is a very ill sign, that our 
souls are not right with God, or that they do not dwell in 
religion. But this I shall say, that they who do use this 
exercise frequently, will make their conscience much at 
ease by casting out a daily load of humour and surfeit, the 
matter of diseases and the instruments of death. “He that 
does not frequently search his conscience, is a house with¬ 
out a window,” and like a wild untutored son of a fond and 
undiscerning widow. 

But if this exercise seem too great a trouble, and that by 
such advices religion will seem a burden; I have two things 
to oppose against it. 

1. One is, that we had better bear the burden of the Lord, 
than the burden of a base and polluted conscience. Religion 
cannot be so great a trouble as a guilty soul; and whatso¬ 
ever trouble can be fancied in this or any other action of re¬ 
ligion, it is only to inexperienced persons. It may be a 
trouble at first, just as is every change and erery new acci¬ 
dent : but if you do it frequently, and accustom your spirit 
to it, as the custom will make it easy, so the advantages 
will make it delectable; that will make it facile as nature, 
these will make it as pleasant and eligible as reward. 

2. The other thing I have to say is this; that to examine 
our lives will be no trouble, if we do not intricate it with 
businesses of the world, and the labyrinths of care and 
impertinent affairs. A man had need have a quiet and dis¬ 
entangled life, who comes to search into all his actions, and 
to make judgment concerning his errors and his needs, 
his remedies and his hopes. They that have great intrigues 
of the world, have a yoke upon their necks, and cannot look 
back; and he that covets many things greedily, and snatches 
at high things ambitiously, that despises his neighbour 
proudly, and bears his crosses peevishly, or his prosperity 
impotently and passionately; he that is prodigal of his 
precious time, and is tenacious and retentive of evil pur¬ 
poses, is "hot a man disposed to this exercise ; he hath 
reason to be afraid of his own memory, and to dash his 
glass in pieces, because it must needs represent to his own 
eyes an intolerable deformity. He therefore that resolves 
to live well, whatsoever it costs him; he that will go to 
heaven at any rate, shall best tend this duty by neglecting 
the affairs of the world in all things, where prudently he 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


5?. 

may. But if we do otherwise, we shall find that the ac¬ 
counts of our death-bed and the examination made by a 
disturbed understanding will be very empty of comfort and 
full of inconveniences. 

6. For hence it comes, that men die so timorously and 
uncomfortably, as if they were forced out of their lives 
bv the violences of an executioner. Then, without much 
examination, they remember how wickedly they have lived, 
without religion, against the laws of the covenant of grace, 
without God in the world: then they see sin goes off like 
an amazed, wounded, affrighted person from a lost battle, 
without a veil, with nothing but shame and sad remem¬ 
brances: then they can consider, that if they had lived 
virtuously, all the trouble and objection of that would now 
be past, and all that had remained, should be peace and 
joy, and all that good, which dwells within the house of 
God, and eternal life. But now they find, they have done 
amiss and dealt wickedly, they have no bank of good works, 
but a huge treasure of wrath, and they are going to a 
strange place, and what shall be their lot is uncertain; (so 
they say, when they would comfort and flatter themselves ;) 
but in truth of religion their portion is sad and intolerable, 
without hope and without refreshment, and they must use 
little silly arts to make them go off from their stage of sins 
with some handsome circumstances of opinion: they will 
in civility be abused, that they may die quietly, and go 
decently to their execution, and leave their friends indif¬ 
ferently contented, and apt to be comforted ; and by that 
time they are gone awhile, they see that they deceived 
themselves all their days, and were by others deceived at 
last. 

Let us make it our own case : we shall come to that state 
and period of condition, in which we shall be infinitely 
comforted, if we have lived well; or else be amazed and 
go off trembling, because we are guilty of heaps of unre¬ 
pented and unforsaken sins. It may happen, we shall not 
then understand it so, because most men of late ages have 
been abused with false principles, and they are taught (or 
they are willing to believe) that a little thing is enough to 
save them, and that heaven is so cheap a purchase, that it 
will fall upon them, whether they will or no. The misery 
of it is, they will not suffer themselves to be confuted, till 
it be too late to recant their error. In the interim, they 

e2 2 h 2 


54 


GENERAL EXERCISES 


are impatient to be examined, as a leper is of a comb, anc 
are greedy of the world, as children of raw fruit; and they 
hate a severe reproof, as they do thorns in their bed; and 
they love to lay aside religion, as a drunken person does 
to forget his sorrow: and all the way they dream of fine 
things, and their dreams prove contrary,, and become the 
hieroglyphics of an eternal sorrow. The daughter of Poly 
crates dreamed, that her father was lifted up, and that 
Jupiter washed him, and the sun anointed him ; but it 
proved to him but a sad prosperity: for after a long life 
of constant prosperous successes he was surprised by his 
enemies, and hanged up till the dew of heaven wet his 
cheeks, and the sun melted his grease. Such is the con¬ 
dition of those persons who, living either in the despite or 
in the neglect of religion, lie wallowing in the drunkenness 
of prosperity or worldly cares: they think themselves to 
be exalted, till the evil day overtakes them; and then they 
can expound their dream of life to end in a sad and hope¬ 
less death. I remember that Cleomenes was called a god 
by the Egyptians, because when he was hanged, a serpent 
grew out of his body, and wrapped itself about his head; 
till the philosophers of Egypt said, it was natural, that from 
the marrow of some bodies such productions should arise. 
And indeed it represents the condition of some men, who, 
being dead, are esteemed saints and beatified persons, when 
their head is encircled with dragons, and is entered into 
the possession of devils, that old serpent and deceiver. 
For indeed their life was secretly so corrupted, that such 
serpents fed upon the ruins of the spirit, and the decays 
of grace and reason. To be cozened in making judgments 
concerning our final condition is extremely easy ; but if we 
be cozened, we are infinitely miserable. 

SECTION III. 

Of exercising Charity during our whole Life. 

/ He that would die well and happily, must, in his life¬ 
time, according to all his capacities, exercise charity; and 
because religion is the life of the soul, and charity is the 
life of religion, the same which gives life to the better part 
of man, which never dies, may obtain of God mercy to the 
inferior part of man in the day of its dissolution. 

1. Charity is the great channel, through which God 

L passes all his mercy upon mankind. For we receive abso 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


55 


lution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother 
This is the rule of our hopes, and the measure ol our de 
sire in this world; and in the day of death and judgment 
the great sentence upon mankind shall be transacted ac¬ 
cording to our alms, which is the other part of charity. 
Certain it is, that God cannot, will not, never did, reject a 
charitable man in his greatest needs and in his most pas¬ 
sionate prayer; for God himself is love, and every degree 
of charity that dwells in us, is the participation of the Di¬ 
vine nature ; and therefore, when upon our death-bed a 
cloud covers our head, and we are enwrapped with sorrow; 
when we feel the weight of a sickness, and do not feel the 
refreshing visitations of God’s loving kindness; when we 
have many things to trouble us, and looking round about 
us we see no comforter; then call to mind, what injuries 
you have forgiven, how apt you were to pardon all affronts 
and real persecutions, how you embraced peace, when it 
was offered you, how you followed after peace, when it ran 
from you: and when you are weary of one side, turn upon 
the other, and remember the alms, that by the grace of God 
and his assistances, you have done, and look up to God, and 
with the eye of faith behold him coming in the cloud, and 
pronouncing the sentence of doomsday according to his 
mercies and thy charity. 

2. Charity with its twin-daughters, alms and forgiveness, 
is especially effectual for the procuring God’s mercies in 
the day and the manner of our death. “ Alms deliver from 
death,” said old Tobias ;* and “ Alms make an atonement 
for sins,” said the son of Sirach :f and so said Daniel,:}: and 
so say all the wise men of the world. And in this sense 
also, is that of St: Peter,§ “ Love covers a multitude of 
sins;” and St. Clement in his Constitutions gives this 
counsel, “ If you have any thing in your hands, give it, 
that it may work to the remission of thy sirfte : for by faith 
and alms sins are purged.” The same also is the counsel 
of Salvian, who wonders, that men, who are guilty of great 
and many sins, will not work out their pardon by alms and 
mercy. But this also must be added out of the words of 
Lactantius, who makes this rule complete and useful; “ But 
think not, because sins are taken away by alms, that, by 
thy money, thou mayest purchase a licence to sin. F&r 

♦ Tob. iv. 10. xii. 9. t Eccles. iii. 30. t Dan. iv. 27. 

$ 1 Pot. iv. 8. Isa. i. 17. 


GENERAL EXERCISES 


56 

sins are abolished, if, because thou hast sinned, thou givest 
to God,” that is, to God’s poor servants, and his indigent 
necessitous creatures : but if thou sinnest upon confidence 
of giving, thy sins are not abolished. For God desires in¬ 
finitely, that men should be purged from their sins, and 
therefore commands us to repent; but to repent is nothing 
else but to profess and affirm (that is, to purpose, and to 
make good that purpose) that they will sin no more. 

Now alms are therefore effective to the abolition and 
pardon of our sins, because they are preparatory to, and 
impetratory of, the grace of repentance, and are fruits of 
repentance : and therefore St. Chrysostom affirms, that re¬ 
pentance without alms is dead, and without wings, and can 
never soar upwards to the element of love. But because 
they are a part of repentance, and hugely pleasing to Al¬ 
mighty God, therefore they deliver us from the evils of an 
unhappy and accursed death; for so Christ delivered his 
disciples from the sea, when he appeased the storm, though 
they still sailed in the channel: and this St. Jerome verifies 
with all his reading and experience, saying, “ I do not re¬ 
member to have read, that ever any charitable person died 
an evil death.” And although a long experience hath ob¬ 
served God’s mercies to descend upon charitable people, 
like the dew upon Gideon’s-fleece, when all the world was 
dry; yet for this also we have a promise, which is not only 
an argument of a certain number of years (as experience is,) 
but a security for eternal ages. “ Make ye friends of the 
mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may 
receive you into everlasting habitations.” When faith fails 
and chastity is useless, and temperance shall be no more, 
then charity shall bear you upon wings of cherubim to the 
eternal mountain of the Lord. “ I have been a lover of 
maok ; nd, and a friend, and merciful; and now I expect to 
communicate in that great kindness which he shows, that 
is the great God and father of men and merciessaid 
Cyrus, the Persian, on his death-bed. 

I do not mean this should only be a death-bed charity > 
anymore than a death-bed repentance; but it ought to 
be the charity of our life and healthful years, a parting with 
portions of our goods then, when we can keep them: we 
irtust, not first kindle our lights, when we are to descend 
into our houses of darkness, or bring a glaring torch sud¬ 
denly to a dark room, that will amaze the eye, and not 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


57 

delight it, or instruct the body: but if our tapers have, in 
their constant course, descended into their grave, crowned 
all the way with light, then let the death-bed charity be 
doubled, and the light burn brightest, when it is to deck 
our hearse. But concerning this I shall afterward give 
account. 


SECTION IV. 

General Considerations to enforce the former Practices. 

These are the general instruments of preparation in 
order to a holy death; it will concern us all to use them 
diligently and speedily; for we must be long in doing that 
which must be done but once; and therefore we must be¬ 
gin betimes, and lose no time : especially since it is so 
great a venture, and upon it depends so great a state. 
Seneca said well, “ There is no science or art in the world 
so hard, as to live and die well: the professors of other 
arts are vulgar and manybut he that knows how to do 
this business is certainly instructed to eternity. But then 
let me remember this, that a wise person will also put upon 
the greatest interest. Common prudence will teach us 
this. No man will hire a general to cut wood, or shake 
hay with a sceptre, or spend his soul and all his faculties 
upon the purchase of a cockle-shell: but he will fit instru¬ 
ments to the dignity and exigence of the design; and 
therefore since heaven is so glorious a state, and so cer¬ 
tainly designed for us, if we please, let us spend all that 
we have, all our passions and affections, all our study and 
industry, all our desires and stratagems, all our witty and 
ingenious faculties, towards the arriving thither: whither 
if we do come, every minute will infinitely pay for all the 
troubles of our whole life; if we do not, we shall have the 
reward of fools, an unpitied and an upbraided misery. 

To this purpose I shall represent the state of dying and 
dead men in the devout words of some of the fathers of 
the church, whose sense I shall exactly keep, but change 
their order; that by placing some of their dispersed medi¬ 
tations into a chain or sequel of discourse, I may with 
their precious stones make a union, and compose them 
into a jewel: for though the meditation is plain and easy, 
yet it is affectionate, and material, and true and necessary. 


.38 


GENERAL EXERCISE^ 


The circumstances of a Dying Man’s sorrow and Danger 

When the sentence of death is decreed, and begins to 
be put into execution, it is sorrow enough to see or feel re¬ 
spectively the sad accents of the agony and last contentions 
of the soul, and the reluctances and unwillingnesses of 
the body: the forehead washed with a new and strangei 
baptism, besmeared with a cold sweat, tenacious and 
clammy, apt to make it cleave to the roof of his coffin ; the 
nose cold and undiscerning, not pleased with perfumes, 
nor suffering violence with a cloud of unwholesome smoke; 
the eyes dim as a sullied mirror, or the face of heaven 
when God shows his anger in a prodigious storm; the feet 
cold, the hands stiff, the physicians despairing, our friends 
weeping, the rooms dressed with darkness and sorrow, and 
the exterior parts betraying what are the violences which 
the soul and spirit suffer: the nobler part, like the lord of 
the house, being assaulted by exterior rudenesses, and 
driven from all the outworks, at last faint and weary with 
short and frequent breathings, interrupted with the longer 
accents of sighs, without moisture, but the excrescences of 
a spilt humour, when the pitcher is broken at the cistern, 
it retires to its last fort, the heart; whither it is pursued, 
and stormed, and beaten out, as when the barbarous Thra¬ 
cian sacked the glory of the Grecian empire. Then calam¬ 
ity is great, and sorrow rules in all the capacities of man ; 
then the mourners weep, because it is civil, or because they 
need thee, or because they fear; but who suffers for thee 
with a compassion sharp as is thy pain? Then the noise is 
like the faint echo of a distant valley, and few hear, and 
they will not regard thee, who seemest like a person void 
of understanding and of a departing interest. Yeri, tre - 
mendum est mortis sacramentum. But these accidents are 
common to all that die; and when a special Providence 
shall distinguish them, they shall die with easy circum¬ 
stances ; but as no piety can secure it, so must no con¬ 
fidence expect it; but wait for the time, and accept the 
manner of the dissolution. But that which distinguishes 
them, is thb: 

He that hath lived a wicked life, if his conscience be 
alarmed, and that he does not die like a wolf or a tiger, 
without sense or remorse of all his wildness and his 
injury, his beastly nature, and desert and untilled man¬ 
ners, if he have but sense of what he is going to suf 


PREPARATORY TO DEATH. 


59 


fer, or what he may expect to be his portion; then we may 
imagine the terror of their abused fancies, how they see 
affrighting shapes, and because they fear them, they feel 
the gripes of devils, urging the unwilling souls from the 
kinder and fast embraces of the body, calling to the grave, 
and hastening to judgment, exhibiting great bills of uncan¬ 
celled crimes, awaking and amazing the conscience, break¬ 
ing all their hope in pieces, and making faith useless and 
terrible, because the malice was great, and the charity was 
none at all. Then they look for some to have pity on them, 
but there is no man. No man dares be their pledge : no 
man can redeem tfyeir soul which now feels what it never 
feared. Then the tremblings and the sorrow, the memory 
of the past sin and the fear of future pains, and the sense 
of an angry God, and the presence of some devils, consign 
him to the eternal company of all the damned and accursed 
spirits. Then they want an angel for their guide, and the 
Holy Spirit for their comforter, and a good conscience for 
their testimony, and Christ for their advocate, and they die 
and are left in prisons of earth or air, in secret and undis¬ 
cerned regions, to weep and tremble, and infinitely to fear 
the coming of the day of Christ; at which time they shall 
be brought forth to change their condition into a worse, 
where they shall for ever feel more than we can believe or 
understand. 

But when a good man dies, one that hath lived innocently, 
or made joy in heaven at his timely and effective repent¬ 
ance, and in whose behalf the holy Jesus hath interceded 
prosperously, and for whose interest the Spirit makes in¬ 
terpellations with groans and sighs unutterable, and in 
whose defence the angels drive away the devils on his 
death-bed, because his sins are pardoned, and because he 
resisted the devil in his lifetime, and fought successfully, 
and persevered unto the end ; then the joys break forth 
through the clouds of sickness, and the conscience stands 
upright and confesses the glories of God, and owns so 
much integrity, that it can hope for pardon, and obtain it 
too : then the sorrows of the sickness, and the flames of 
the fever, or the faintness of the consumption, do but untie 
the soul from its chain, and let it go forth, first into liberty 
and then to glory: for it is but for a little while that the 
face of the sky was black, like the preparations of the 
night, but quickly the cloud was torn and rent, the violence 


GENERAL EXERCISES, &e. 


60 

of thunder parted it into little portions, that the sun might 
look forth with a watery eye, and then shine without a tear. 
But it is an infinite refreshment to remember all the com¬ 
forts of his prayers, the frequent victory over his tempta¬ 
tions, the mortification of his lust, the noblest sacrifice tc 
God, in which he most delights, that we have given him 
our wills, and killed our appetites for the interest of his 
services: then all the trouble of that is gone ; and what re¬ 
mains is a portion in the inheritance of Jesus, of which he 
now talks no more as a thing at distance, but is entering 
into the possession. When the veil is rent, and the prison- 
doors are open at the presence of God’s angel, the soul goes 
forth full of hope, sometimes with evidence, but always 
with certainty in the thing, and instantly it passes into the 
throngs of spirits, where angels meet in singing, and the 
devils flock with malicious and vile purposes, desiring to 
lead it away with them into their houses of sorrow: there 
they see things which they never saw, and* hear voices 
which they never heard. There the devils charge them 
with many sins, and the angels remember, that themselves 
rejoiced, when they were repented of. Then the devils ag¬ 
gravate and describe all the circumstances of the sin, and 
add calumnies; and the angels bear the soul forward still, 
because the Lord doth answer for them. Then the devils 
rage and gnash their teeth; they see the soul chaste and 
pure, and they are ashamed; they see it penitent, and they 
despair; they perceive, that the tongue was refrained and 
sanctified, and then hold their peace. Then the soul passes 
forth and rejoices, passing by the devils in scorn and tri¬ 
umph, being securely carried into the bosom of the Lord, 
where they shall rest, till their crowns are finished, and 
their mansions are prepared; and then they shall feast and 
sing, rejoice and worship, for ever and ever. Fearful and 
formidable to unholy persons is the first meeting with spi¬ 
rits in their separation. But the victory, which holy souls 
receive by the mercies of Jesus Christ and the conduct of 
angels, is a joy that we must not understand till we feel • 
it: and yet such which by an early and a persevering piety 
we may secure; but let us inquire after it no further, be* 
cause it is secret. 


REMEDIES OF TEMPTATIONS, &c. 


61 


CHAPTER III. 

OF THE STATE OF SICKNESS, AND THE TEMPTATIONS INC! 

DENT TO IT, WITH THEIR PROPER REMEDIES. 

SECTION I. 

Of the State of Sickness. 

Adam’s sin brought death into the world, and man did 
die the same day in which he sinned, according as God had 
threatened. He did not die, as death is taken for a sepa¬ 
ration of soul and body; that is not death properly, but 
the ending of the last act of death; just as a man is said 
to be born, when he ceases any longer to be born in his 
mother’s womb : but whereas to man was intended a life 
long and happy, without sickness, sorrow, or infelicity, and 
this life should be lived here or in a better place, and the 
passage from one to the other should have been easy, safe, 
and pleasant, now that man sinned, he fell from that state, 
to a contrary. 

If Adam had stood, he should not always have lived in 
this world; for this world was not a place capable of 
giving a dwelling to all those myriads of men and women 
which should have been born in all the generations of infi¬ 
nite and eternal ages ; for so it must have been, if man 
had not died at all, nor yet have removed hence at all. 
Neither is it likely that man’s innocence should have lost 
to him all possibility of going thither, where the duration is 
better, measured by a better time, subject to fewer changes, 
and which is now* the reward of a returning virtue, which 
in all natural senses is less than innocence, save that it is 
heightened by Christ to an equality of acceptation with the 
state of innocence: but so it must have been, that his in¬ 
nocence should have been punished with an eternal con¬ 
finement to this state, which in all reason is the less per¬ 
fect, the state of a traveller, not of one possessed of his 
inheritance. It is therefore certain, man should have 
changed his abode : for so did Enoch, and so did Elias, and 
so shall all the world, that shall be alive at the day of judg¬ 
ment they shall not die, but they shall change their place 
and their abode, their duration and their state, and all this 
without death. 

That death, therefore, which God threatened to Adam, 

/ 21 


62 


THE REMEDIES OF TEMPTATIONS 


and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out 
of this world, but the manner of going. If he had stayed 
in innocence, he should have gone from hence placidly and 
fairly, without vexatious and afflictive circumstances; he 
should not have died by sickness, misfortune, defect, or 
unwillingness: but when he fell, then he began to die ; 
the same day, (so said God :) and that must needs be true; 
and therefore it must mean, that upon that very day, he 
fell into an evil and dangerous condition, a state of change 
and affliction; then death began, that is, the man began to 
die by a natural diminution, and aptness to disease and 
misery. His first state was, and should have been (so long 
as it lasted) a happy duration; his second, was a daily and 
miserable change ; and this was the dying properly. 

This appears in the great instance of damnation, which, 
in the style of Scripture, is called eternal death; not be¬ 
cause it kills or ends the duration; it hath not so much 
good in it; but because it is a perpetual infelicity. Change 
or separation of soul and body is but accidental to death; 
death may be with or without either ; but the formality, the 
curse, and the sting of death, that is, misery, sorrow; fear, 
diminution, defect, anguish, dishonour, and whatsoever is 
miserable and afflictive in nature, that is death. Death is 
not an action, but a whole state and condition ; and this 
was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man. 

But this went no farther than thus to subject us to tem¬ 
poral infelicity. If it had proceeded so far as was sup¬ 
posed, man had been much more miserable ; for man had 
more than one original sin, in this sense; and though this 
death entered first upon us by Adam’s fault, yet it came 
nearer unto us and increased upon us by the sins ofmore of 
our forefathers. For Adam’s sin left us in strength enough 
to contend with human calamities for almost a thousand 
years together. But the sins of his children, our fore¬ 
fathers, took off from us half the strength about the time 
of the flood; and then from five hundred to two hundred 
and fifty, and from thence to one hundred and twenty, and 
from thence to threescore and ten; so often halving it till 
it is almost come to nothing. But by the sins of men in 
the several generations of the world, death, that is, misery 
and disease is hastened so upon us, that we are of a con¬ 
temptible age: and because we are to die by suffering evils, 
and by the daily lessening of our strength and health • 


PROPER IN SICKNESS. 


63 

^this death is so long a doing, that it makes so great a part 
of our short life useless and unserviceable, that we have 
not time enough to get the perfection of a single manufac¬ 
ture, but ten or twelve generations of the world must go to 
the making up of one wise man, or one excellent art: and 
in the succession of those ages there happen so many 
changes and interruptions, so many wars and violences, 
that seven years’ fighting sets a whole kingdom back in 
learning and virtue, to which they were creeping, it may 
be, a whole age. 

And thus also we do evil to our posterity, as Adam did to 
his, and Cham to his, and Eli to his, and all they to theirs, 
who by sins caused God to shorten the life and multiply the 
evils of mankind : and for this reason it is, the world grows 
worse and worse, because so many original sins are multi¬ 
plied, and so many evils from parents descend upon the 
succeeding generations of men, that they derive nothing 
from us but original misery. 

But he who restored the law of nature, did also restore 
us to the condition of nature; which, being violated by the 
introduction of death, Christ then repaired, when he suf¬ 
fered and overcame death for us; that is, he hath taken 
away the unhappiness of sickness, and the sting of death, 
and the dishonours of the grave, of dissolution and weak¬ 
ness, of decay and change, and hath turned them into acts 
of favour, into instances of comfort, into opportunities of 
virtue; Christ hath now knit them into rosaries and coro¬ 
nets ; he hath put them,into promises and rewards; he hath 
made them part of the portion of his elect; they are instru¬ 
ments, and earnests, and securities, and passages, to the 
greatest perfection of human nature, and the Divine pro¬ 
mises. So that it is possible for us now to be reconciled to 
sickness; it came in by sin, and therefore is cured, when it 
is turned into virtue; and although it may have in it the 
uneasiness of labour, yet it will not be uneasy as sin, or the 
restlessness of a discomposed conscience. If, therefore, we 
can well manage our state of sickness, that we may not fall 
by pain, as we usually do by pleasure, we need not fear 
for no evil shall happen to us. 


64 


OF IMPATIENCE, 


SECTION II. 

\ v • * 

Of the Jirst Temptation proper to the state of Sickness , 

Impatience . 

Men, that are in health, are severe exactors of patience 
at the hands of them that are sick; and they usually judge 
it not by terms of relation between God and the suffering 
man, but between him and the friends that stand by the 
bed-side. It will be therefore necessary, that we truly un¬ 
derstand, to what duties and actions the patience of a sick 
man ought to extend. 

1. Sighs and groans, sorrow and prayers, humble com¬ 
plaints and dolorous expressions, are the sad accents of a 
sick man’s language : for it is not to be expected, that a 
sick man should act a part of patience with a countenance 
like an orator, or grave like a dramatic person : it were well, 
if all men could bear an exterior decency in their sickness, 
and regulate their voice, their face, their discourse, and all 
their circumstances, by the measures and proportions of 
comeliness and satisfaction to all the standers by. But 
this would better please them, than assist him ; the sick 
man would do more good to others, than he would receive 
to himself. 

2. Therefore, silence and still composures, and not com¬ 
plaining, are no parts of a sick man’s duty; they are not 
necessary parts of patience. We find, that David roared 
for the very disquiet of his sickness : and he lay chattering 
like a swallow, and his throat was dry with calling for help 
upon his God. That’s the proper voice of sickness; and 
certain it is, that the proper voices of sickness are express¬ 
ly vocal and petitory in the ears of God, and call for pity 
in the same accent, as the cries and oppressions of widows 
and orphans do for vengeance upon their persecutors, 
though they say no collect against them. For there is the 
voice of man, and there is the voice of the disease, and 
God hears both; and the louder the disease speaks, there 
is the greater need of mercy and pity, and therefore God 
will the sooner hear it. Abel’s blood had a voice, and 
cried to God; and humility hath a voice, and cries so loud 
to God, that it pierces the clouds ; and so hath every sor¬ 
row and every sickness: and when a man cries out, and 
complains but according to the sorrows of his pain, it can 


OF IMPATIENCE. 


65 


not be any part of a culpable impatience, but an argument 
for pity. 

3. Some men’s senses are so subtile, and their percep¬ 
tions so quick and full of relish, and their spirits so active, 
that the same load is double upon them, to what it is to 
another person : and therefore comparing the expressions 
of the one to the silence of the other, a different judgment 
cannot be made concerning their patience. Some natures 
are querulous, and melancholy, and soft, and nice, and 
tender, and weeping, and expressive; others are sullen, 
dull, without apprehension, apt to tolerate and carry bur¬ 
dens : and the crucifixion of our blessed Saviour, falling 
upon a delicate and virgin body, of curious temper, and 
strict, equal composition, was naturally more full of tor¬ 
ment than that of the ruder thieves, whose proportions 
were coarser and uneven. 

4. In this case, it was no imprudent advice, which Ci¬ 
cero gave : nothing in the world is more amiable than an 
even temper in our whole life, and in every action : but 
this unevenness cannot be kept, unless every man follows 
his own nature, without striving to imitate the circum¬ 
stances of another. And what is so in the thing itself, 
ought to be so in our judgments concerning the things. 
We must not call any one impatient, if he be not silent in 
a fever, as if he were asleep: or as if he wert dull, as 
Herod’s son of Athens. 

5. Nature, in some cases, has made cryings out and ex¬ 
clamations to be an entertainment of the spirit, and an 
abatement or diversion of the pain. For so did the old 
champions, when they threw their fatal nets, that they might 
load their enemy with the snares and weights of death ; 
they groaned aloud, and sent forth the anguish of their 
spirit into the eyes and heart of the man that stood against 
them: so it is in the endurance of some sharp pains; the 
complaints and shriekings, the sharp groans, and the ten¬ 
der accents send forth the afflicted spirits, and force away, 
that they may ease their oppression and their load; that 
w'hen they have spent some of their sorrows by a sally 
fovth, they may return better able to fortify the heart. 
Nothing of this is a certain sign, much less an action or 
part of impatience ; and when our blessed Saviour suffered 
his last and sharpest pang of sorrow, he cried out with a 
loud voice, and resolved to die, and did so. 

f 2 2t » 


OF PATIENCE 


36 


SECTION III. 

Constituent or integral parts of Patience. 

1. That we may secure our patience, we must take care 
that our complaints be without despair. Despair sins 
against the reputation of God’s goodness, and the efficacy 
of all our old experience. By despair we destroy the great¬ 
est comfort of our sorrows, and turn our sickness into the 
state of devils and perishing souls. No affliction is greater 
than despair : fer that is it, which makes hell-fire, and 
turns a natural evil into an intolerable ; it hinders prayers, 
and fills up the intervals of sickness with a worse torture; 
it makes all spiritual arts useless, and the office of spiritual 
comforters and guides to be impertinent. 

Against this, hope is to be opposed : and its proper acts, 
as it relates to the virtue and exercise of patience, are, 1. 
Praying to God for help and remedy; 2. Sending for the 
guides of souls ; 3. Using all holy exercises and acts of 
grace proper to that state : which whoso does, hath not the 
impatience of despair; every man that is patient, hath hope 
in God in the day of his sorrows. 

2. Our complaints in sickness must be without murmur. 
Murmur sins against God’s providence and government: 
by it Ave grow rude, and, like the falling angels, displeased 
at God’s supremacy ; and nothing is more unreasonable : 
it talks against God, for whose glory all speech was made ; 
it is proud and fantastic, hath better opinions of a sinner 
than of the Divine justice, and would rather accuse God 
than himself. 

Against this is opposed that part of patience, Avhich re¬ 
signs the man into the hands of God, saying, with old Eli, 
“ It is the Lord, let him do what he willand, “ Thy will 
be done in earth as it is in heavenand so the admiring 
God’s justice and wisdom, does also dispose the sick per¬ 
son for receiving God’s mercy, and secures him the ra- 
her in the grace of God. The proper acts of this part of 
patience are, 1. To confess our sins and our own de¬ 
merits : 2. It increases and exercises humility: 3. It loves 
to sing praises to God, even from the lowest abyss of human 
misery. 

3. Our complaints in sickness must be without peevish¬ 
ness. This sins against civility, and that necessary de¬ 
cency, which must be used towards the ministers, and as- 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


67 


iistants. By peevishness we increase our own sorrows 
and are troublesome to them that stand there to ease ours. 
It hath in it harshness of nature and ungentleness, wilful¬ 
ness and fantastic opinions, morosity and incivility. 

Against it are opposed obedience, tractability, easiness of 
persuasion, aptness to take counsel. The acts of this part of 
patience are, 1. To obey our physicians; 2. To treat our 
persons with respect to our present necessities; 3. Not to 
be ungentle and uneasy to the ministers and nurses that 
attend us; but to take their diligent and kind offices as 
sweetly as we can, and to bear their indiscretions or un¬ 
handsome accidents contentedly and without disquietness 
within, or evil language or angry words without; 4. Not to 
use unlawful means for our recovery. 

If we secure these particulars, we are not lightly to be 
judged of by noises and postures, by colours and images of 
things, by paleness, or tossings from side to side. For it 
were a hard thing, that those persons, who are loaden with 
the greatest of human calamities, should be strictly tied to 
ceremonies and forms of things. He is patient, that calls 
upon God; that hopes for health or heaven; that believes 
God is wise and just in sending him afflictions; that con¬ 
fesses his sins; and accuses himself, and justifies God ; that 
expects God will turn this into good; that is civil to his 
physicians and his servants; that converses with the guides 
of souls, the ministers of religion; and, in all things, sub¬ 
mits to God’s will, and would use no indirect means for his 
recovery; but had rather be sick and die, than enter at all 
into God’s displeasure. 

SECTION IV. 

Remedies against Impatience , by way of Consideration. 

As it happens concerning death, so it is in sickness, which 
is death’s handmaid. It hath the fate to suffer calumny and 
reproach, and hath a name worse than its nature. 

1. For there is no sickness so great but children endure 
it, and have natural strengths to bear them out quite 
through the calamity, what period soever nature hath al¬ 
lotted it. Indeed they make no reflections upon their suf¬ 
ferings, and complain of sickness with an uneasy sigh or 
a natural groan, but consider not, what the sorrows of sick¬ 
ness mean; and so bear it by a direct sufferance, and as a 
nillar bears the weight of a roof. But then why cannot 


68 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


we bear it so too ? For this which we call a reflection upon, 
or a considering of our sickness, is nothing but a perfect 
instrument of trouble, and consequently a temptation to 
impatience. It serves no end of nature : it may be avoided, 
and we may consider it only as an expression of God’s 
anger, and an emissary or procurator of repentance. But 
all other considering it, except where it serves the pur¬ 
poses of medicine and art, is nothing but, under the colour 
of reason, an unreasonable device to heighten the sickness 
and increase the torment. But then, as children want this 
act of reflex perception or reasonable sense, whereby their 
sickness becomes less pungent and dolorous; so also do 
they want the helps of reason, whereby they should be able 
to support it. For certain it is, reason was as well given 
us to harden our spirits, and stiffen them in passions and 
sad accidents, as to make us bending and apt for action: 
and if in men God hath heightened the faculties of appre¬ 
hension, he hath increased the auxiliaries of reasonable 
strengths; that God’s rod and God’s staff* might go to¬ 
gether, and the beam of God’s countenance may as well re¬ 
fresh us with its light, as scorch us with its heat. But poor 
children that endure so much, have not inward supports 
and refreshments to bear them through it: they never 
heard the sayings of old men, nor have been taught the 
principles of severe philosophy, nor are assisted with the 
results of a long experience, nor know they how to turn 
a sickness into virtue, and a fever into a reward; nor have 
they any sense of favours, the remembrance of which may 
alleviate their burden ; and yet nature hath in them teeth 
and nails enough to scratch, and flght against the sickness; 
and by such aids, as God is pleased to give them, they 
wade through the storm, and murmur not. And besides 
this, yet, although infants have not such brisk perceptions 
upon the stock of reason, they have a more tender feeling 
upon the accounts of sense, and their flesh is as uneasy by 
their natural softness and weak shoulders, as ours by our 
too forward apprehensions. Therefore bear up : either you 
or 1, or some man wiser, and many a woman weaker than 
us both, Gi the very children, have endured worse evil than 
this, that is upon thee now. 

That sorrow is hugely tolerable, which gives its smart 
but by instants and smallest proportions of time. No man 
at once feels the sickness of a week, or of a whole day , 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


69 


but the smart of an instant; and still every portion of a 
minute feels but its proper share ; and the last groan ended 
all the sorrow of its peculiar burden. And what minute 
can that be, which can pretend to be intolerable ? and the 
next minute is but the same as the last, and the pain flows 
like the drops of a river, or the little shreds of time; and 
if we do but take care of the present minute, it cannot seem 
a great charge or a great burden; but that care will secure 
our duty, if we still but secure the present minute. 

3. If we consider, how much men can suffer, if they list, 
and how much they do suffer for great and little causes, 
and that no causes are greater than the proper causes of 
patience in sickness (that is, necessity and religion,)we 
cannot, without huge shame to our nature, to our persons, 
and to our manners, complain of this tax and impost of 
nature. This experience added something to the old phi¬ 
losophy. When the gladiators were exposed naked to each 
other’s short swords, and were to cut each other’s souls 
away in portions of flesh, as if their forms had been as di¬ 
visible as the life of worms, they did not sigh or groan, it 
was a shame to decline the blow, but according to the just 
measures of art. The women that saw the wound, shriek 
out; and he that receives it, holds his peace. He did not 
only stand bravely, but would also fall so; and when he 
was down, scorned to shrink his head, when the insolent 
conqueror came to lift it from his shoulders: and yet this 
man, in his first design, only aimed at liberty, and the re¬ 
putation of a good fencer; and when he sunk down, he 
saw' he could only receive the honour of a bold man, the 
noise of which ho shall never hear, when his ashes are 
crammed in his narrow urn. And what can we complain of 
the weakness of our strength, or the pressures of diseases, 
when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach almost starved 
with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only 
by the heats of anger, a fever, or a fired musket, and his 
hunger slackened by a greater pain and a huge fear? this 
man shall stand in his arms and wounds r patiens Ivminis 
aique solis , pale and faint, weary and watchful: and at 
night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers 
from his bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from 
a violent rent to its own dimension; and all this for a man 
whom he never saw, or if he did, was not noted by him; 
but one that shall condemn him to the gallows, if he run? 


70 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


from all this misery. It is seldom that God sends such ca¬ 
lamities upon men, as men bring upon themselves, and suf¬ 
fer willingly. But that, which is most considerable is, that 
any passion and violence upon the spirit of man makes him 
able to suffer huge calamities with a certain constancy and 
an unwearied patience. Scipio Africanus was wont to com¬ 
mend that saying in Xenophon, That the same labours of 
warfare were easier far to a general than to a common sol¬ 
dier ; because he was supported by the huge appetites of 
honour, which made his hard marches nothing but stepping 
forward and reaching at a triumph. Did not the lady of Sa 
binus, for others’ interest, bear twins privately and without 
groaning? Are not the labours and cares, the spare diet and 
the waking nights of covetous and adulterous, of ambitious 
and revengeful persons, greater sorrows and of more smart 
than a fever, or the short pains of child-birth? What will 
not tender women suffer to hide their shame? And if vice 
and passion, lust and inferior appetites, can supply to the 
tenderest persons strengths more than enough for the suf¬ 
ferance of the greatest natural violences, can we suppose 
that honesty and religion and the grace of God are more 
nice, tender, and effeminate? 

4. Sickness is the more tolerable, because it cures very 
many evils, and takes away the sense of all the cross for¬ 
tunes, which amaze the spirits of some men, and transport 
them certainly beyond all the limits of patience. Here all 
losses and disgraces, domestic cares and public evils, the 
apprehensions of pity and a sociable calamity, the fears of 
want and the troubles of ambition, lie down and rest upon 
the sick man’s pillow. One fit of the stone takes away 
from the fancies of men all relations to the world and secu¬ 
lar interests; at least they are made dull and flat, without 
sharpness and an edge. 

And he, that shall observe the infinite variety of troubles, 
which afflict some busy persons, and almost all men in 
very busy times, will think it not much amiss, that those 
huge numbers were reduced to certainty, to method, and 
an order: and there is no better compendium for this, than 
that they be reduced to one. And a sick man seems so 
unconcerned in the things of the world, that, although this 
separation be done with violence, yet it is no otherwise 
than all noble contentions are, and all honours are pur¬ 
chased, and all virtues are acquired, and all vices mortified, 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 71 

and all appetites chastised, and all rewards obtained: there 
is infallibly to all these a difficulty and a sharpness an¬ 
nexed, without which there could be no proportion between 
a work and a reward. To this add, that sickness does not 
take off the sense of secular troubles and worldly cares 
from us, by employing all the perceptions and apprehen¬ 
sions of men; by filling all faculties with sorrow, and 
leaving no room for the lesser instances of troubles, as lit¬ 
tle rivers are swallowed up in the sea; but sickness is a 
messenger of God, sent with purposes of abstraction and 
separation, with a secret power and a proper efficacy to 
draw us off from unprofitable and useless sorrows : and this 
is effected partly, by reason that it represents the useless¬ 
ness of the things of this world, and that there is a portion 
of this life, in which honours and things of the world can¬ 
not serve us to many purposes; partly, by preparing us to 
death, and telling us, that a man shall descend thither, 
whence this world cannot redeem us, and where the goods 
of this world cannot serve us. 

5. And yet, after all this, sickness leaves in us appetites 
so strong, and apprehensions so sensible, and delights so 
many, and good things in so great a degree, that a health¬ 
less body and a sad disease do seldom make men weary 
of this world, but still they would fain find an excuse to 
live. The gout, the stone, and the tooth-ache, the sciatiqa, 
sore eyes, and an aching head, are evils indeed ; but such, 
which, rather than die, most men are willing to suffer; and 
Mecaenas added also a wish, rather to be crucified than to 
die : and though his wish was low, timorous, and base, yet 
we find the same desires in most men, dressed up with 
better circumstances. It was a cruel mercy in Tamerlane, 
who commanded all the leprous persons to be put to death, 
as we knock some beasts quickly on their head, to put 
them out of pain, and lest they should live miserably: the 
poor men would rather have endured another leprosy, and 
have more willingly taken two diseases than one death. 
Therefore Caesar wondered, that the old crazed soldier 
begged leave he might kill himself, and asked him, “ Dost 
thou think then to be more alive, than now thou art?” We 
do not die suddenly, but we descend to death by steps and 
slow passages: and therefore men (so long as they are 
sick) are unwilling to proceed and go forward in the finish 
; ng that sad employment. Between a disease and death 


72 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


there are many degrees, and all those are like the reserves 
of evil things, the declining of every one of which is justly 
reckoned amongst those good things, which alleviate the 
sickness and make it tolerable. Never account that sick¬ 
ness intolerable, in which thou hadst rather remain than 
die : and yet if thou hadst rather die than suffer it, the 
worst of it that can be said is this, that the sickness is 
worse than death; that is, it is worse than that, which is 
the best of all evils, and the end of all troubles; and then 
you have said no great harm against it. 

6. Remember, that thou art under a supervening neces¬ 
sity. Nothing is intolerable, that is necessary : and there¬ 
fore when men are to suffer a sharp incision, or what they 
are pleased to call intolerable, tie the man down to it, and 
he endures it. Now God hath bound this sickness upon 
thee by the condition of nature; for every flow r er must wi¬ 
ther and drop ; it is also bound upon thee by special provi¬ 
dence, and with a design to try thee, and with purposes 
to reward and to crown thee. These cords thou canst not 
break; and therefore lie thou down gently, and suffer the 
hand of God to do what he please, that at least thou may- 
est swallow an advantage, which the care and severe mer¬ 
cies of God force down thy throat. 

7. Remember, that all men have passed this way; the 
bravest the wisest, and the best men have been subject to 
sickness and sad diseases; and it is esteemed a prodigy, 
that a man should live to a long age, and not be sick : and 
it is recorded for a wonder concerning Xenophilus the mu¬ 
sician, that he lived to one hundred and six years of age, 
in a perfect and continual health. No story tells the like 
of a prince, or a great or a wise person; unless we have 
a mind to believe the tales concerning Nestor and the 
Eubcean Sybil, or reckon Cyrus of Persia, or Masinissa 
the Mauritanian to be rivals of old age, or that Argento- 
nius the Tartesian king did really outstrip that age, ac 
cording as his story tells, reporting him to have reigned 
eighty years, and to have lived one hundred and twenty. 
Old age and healthful bodies are seldom made the appen¬ 
dages to great fortunes: and under so great and so univer¬ 
sal precedents, so common fate of men, he that will not 
suffer his portion, deserves to be something else than a man, 
but nothing that is better. 

8. We find in story, that many Gentiles, who walked by 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


73 


no light but that of reason, opinion, and human examples, 
did bear their sickness nobly, and with great contempt of 
pain, and with huge interests of virtue. When Pompey came 
from Syria, and called at Rhodes, to see Posidonius the phi¬ 
losopher, he found him hugely afflicted with the gout, and 
expressed his sorrow that he could not hear his lectures, 
from which by this pain he must needs be hindered. Posido¬ 
nius told him, “ But you may hear me for all this and he 
discoursed excellently in the midst of his tortures, even then, 
when the torches were put to his feet, “ That nothing was 
good but what was honestand therefore “ nothing could 
be an evil, if it were not criminaland summed up his 
lectures with this saying, “ O pain, in vain dost thou at¬ 
tempt me; for I will never confess thee to be an evil, as 
long as I can honestly bear thee.” And when Pompey 
himself was desperately sick at Naples, the Neapolitans 
wore crowns and triumphed, and the men of Puteoli came 
to congratulate his sickness, not because they loved him 
not, but because it was the custom of their country to have 
better opinions of sickness than we have. The boys of Sparta 
would, at their altars, endure whipping, till their very en¬ 
trails saw the light through their torn flesh ; and some of 
them to death, without crying or complaint. Caesar would 
drink his portions of rhubarb rudely mixed, and unfitly al¬ 
layed, with little sippings, and tasted the horror of the medi¬ 
cine, spreading the loathsomeness of his physic so, that all 
the parts of his tongue and palate might have an entire share; 
and when C. Marius suffered the veins of his leg to be cut 
out for the curing his gout, and yet shrunk not, no declared 
not only the rudeness of their physic, but the strength of a 
man’s spirit, if it be contracted and united by the aids of a 
reason or religion, by resolution or any accidental harsh¬ 
ness, against a violent disease. 

9. All impatience, howsoever expressed, is perfectly 
useless to all purposes of ease, but hugely effective to the 
multiplying the trouble ; and the impatience and vexation 
is another, but the sharper disease of the two: it does mis¬ 
chief by itself, and mischief by the disease. For men 
grieve themselves, as much as they please; and when, by 
impatience, they put themselves into the retinue of sorrows, 
they become solemn mourners. For so have I seen the 
rays of the sun or moon dash upon a brasen vessel, whose 
lips kissed the face of those waters that lodged within its 

2 K 


74 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


bosom; but being turned back, and sent off with its smooth 
pretences or rougher waftings, it wandered about the room, 
and beat upon the roof, and still doubled its heat and 
motion. So is a sickness and a sorrow, entertained by an 
unquiet and a discontented man, turned back either with 
anger or with excuses; but then the pain passes from the 
stomach to the liver, and from the liver to the heart, and 
from the heart to the head, and from feeling to consider¬ 
ation, from thence to sorrow, and at last ends in impa¬ 
tience and useless murmur ; and all the way the man was 
impotent and weak, but the sickness was doubled, and 
grew imperious and tyrannical over the soul and body. 
Masurius Sabinus tells, that the image of the goddess An- 
gerona was, with a muffler upon her mouth, placed upon 
the altar of Volupia, to represent, that those persons, who 
bear their sicknesses and sorrows without murmurs, shall 
certainly pass from sorrow to pleasure, and the ease and 
honours of felicity ; but they, that with spite and indigna¬ 
tion, bite the burning coal, or shake the yoke upon their 
necks, gall their spirits, and fret the skin, and hurt nothing 
but themselves. 

10. Remember, that this sickness is but for a short time: 
if it be sharp, it will not last long ; if it be long, it will 
be easy and very tolerable. And although St. Eadsine, 
archbishop of Canterbury, had twelve years of sickness, 
yet, all that while, he ruled his church prudently, gave ex¬ 
ample of many virtues, and, after his death, was enrolled 
in the calendar of saints, who had finished their course pros¬ 
perously. Nothing is more unreasonable than to entangle 
our spirits in wildness and amazement, like a partridge 
fluttering in a net, which she breaks not, though she breaks 
her wings. 

SECTION V. 

Remedies against Impatience , by way of Exercise . 

1. The fittest instrument of esteeming sickness easilv 
tolerable is, to remember that which indeed makes it so ; 
and that is, that God doth minister proper aids and sup¬ 
ports to every of his servants, whom he visits with his rod. 
He knows our needs, he pities our sorrows, he relieves 
our miseries, he supports our weakness, he bi'ds us ask for 
help, and he promises to give us all that, and he usually 
gives us more : and indeed it is observable, that no story 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


75 


tells of any godly man, who, living in the fear of God, fell 
into a violent and unpardoned impatience in his natural 
sickness, if he used those means which God and his holy 
church have appointed. We see almost all men bear theii 
last sickness with sorrows indeed, but without violent pas¬ 
sions ; and unless they fear death violently, they suffer the 
sickness with some indifferency : and it is a rare thing to 
see a man, who enjoys his reason in his sickness, to express 
the proper signs of a direct and solemn impatience. For 
when God lays a sickness upon us, he seizes commonly on 
a man’s spirits, which are the instruments of action and 
business; and when they are secured from being tumul¬ 
tuous, the sufferance is much the easier: and therefore sick¬ 
ness secures all that, which can do the man mischief; it 
makes him tame and passive, apt for suffering, and con¬ 
fines him to an unactive condition. To which if we add, 
that God then commonly produces fear, and all those pas¬ 
sions, which naturally tend to humility and poverty of 
spirit, we shall soon perceive by what instruments God 
verifies his promise to us (which is the great security for 
our patience, and the easiness of our condition,) that God 
will lay no more upon us than he will make us able to bear, 
but, together with the affliction, he will find a way to es¬ 
cape.* Nay, if any thing can be more than this, we have 
two or three promises, in which we may safely lodge our¬ 
selves, and roll from off our thorns, and find ease and rest: 
God hath promised to be with us in our trouble, and to be 
with us in our prayers, and to be with us in our hope and 
confidence.f 

2. Prevent the violence and trouble of thy spirit by an 
act of thanksgiving; for which in the worst of sicknesses 
thou canst not want cause, especially if thou rememberest, 
that this pain is not an eternal pain. Bless God for that: 
but take heed also, lest you so order your affairs, that you 
pass from hence to an eternal sorrow. If that be hard, this 
will be intolerable : but as for the present evil, a few days 
will end it. 

3. Remember, that thou art a man, and a Christian: as 
the covenant of nature hath made it necessary, so the cove¬ 
nant of grace hath made it to be chosen by thee, to be a 
suffering person ; either you must renounce your religion 

* 1 Cor. x. 13. i 

t Psal. ix. 9. Matt. vii. 7. Jam. v. 13. Psal. xxxi. 19. 24. xxxiv. 22. 


76 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


or submit to the impositions of God, and thy portion of suf 
ferings. So that here we see our advantages, and let us 
use them accordingly. The barbarous and warlike nations 
of old could fight well and willingly, but could not bear 
sickness manfully. The Greeks were cowardly in their 
fights, as most wise men are; but because they were learn¬ 
ed and well taught, they bore their sickness with patience 
and severity. The Cimbrians and Celtiberians rejoice in 
battle like giants; but, in their diseases, they weep like 
women. These, according to their institutions and designs, 
had unequal courages and accidental fortitude. But since 
our religion hath made a covenant of sufferings, and the 
great business of our lives is suffering, and most of the 
virtues of a Christian are passive graces, and all the promi¬ 
ses of the gospel are passed upon us through Christ’s cross, 
we have a necessity upon us to have an equal courage in 
all the variety of our sufferings: for, without a universal 
fortitude, we can do nothing of our duty. 

4. Resolve to do as much as you can; for certain it is, 
we can suffer very much, if we list; and many men have 
afflicted themselves unreasonably, by not being skilful to 
consider how much their strength and state could permit; 
and our flesh is nice and imperious, crafty to persuade rea¬ 
son, that she hath more necessities than indeed belong to 
her, and that she demands nothing superfluous. Suffer as 
much in obedience to God, as you can suffer for necessity 
or passion, fear or desire. And if you can for one thing, 
you can for another, and there is nothing wanting but the 
mind. Never say, I can do no more, I cannot endure this : 
for God would not have sent it, if he had not known thee 
strong enough to abide it; only he, that knows thee well 
already, would also take this occasion to make thee know' 
thyself, but it will be fit, that you pray to God to give you a 
discerning spirit, that you may rightly distinguish just ne¬ 
cessity from the flattery and fondness of flesh and blood. 

5. Propound to your eyes and heart the example of the 
holy Jesus upon the cross; he endured more for thee, than 
thou canst either for thyself or him : and remember, that 
if we put to suffer, and do suffer in a good cause, or in a 
good manner, so that in any sense your sufferings be con¬ 
formable to his sufferings, or can be capable of being 
united to his, we shall reign together with him. The 
high way of the cross, which the King of sufferings hath 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 77 

trodden before us, is the way to ease, to a kingdom, and to 
felicity. 

6. The very suffering is a title to an excellent inherit¬ 
ance : for God chastens every son whom he receives; and 
if we be not chastised, we are bastards, and not sons. And 
be confident, that although God often sends pardon with¬ 
out correction, yet he never sends correction without par¬ 
don, unless it be thy fault: and therefore take every or any 
affliction as an earnest-penny of thy pardon; and, upon 
condition there may be peace with God, let any thing be 
welcome, that he can send as its instrument or condition. 
Suffer, therefore, God to choose his own circumstances of 
adopting thee, and be content to be under discipline, when 
the reward of that is to become the son of God: and by 
such inflictions he hews and breaks thy body, first dressing 
it to funeral, and then preparing it for immortality. And, 
if this be the effect or the design of God’s love to thee, let 
it be occasion of thy love to him; and remember, that the 
truth of love is hardly known, but by somewhat that puts 
us to pain. 

7. Use this as a punishment for thy sins; and so God 
intends it most commonly ; that is certain: if, therefore, 
thou submittest to it, thou approvest of the Divine judg¬ 
ment : and no man can have cause to complain of any thing 
but himself, if either he believes God to be just, or himself 
to be a sinner; if he either thinks he has deserved hell, or 
that this little may be a means to prevent the greater, and 
bring him to heaven. 

8. It may be, that this may be the last instance and the 
last opportunity that ever God will give thee to exercise 
any virtue, to do him any service, or thyself any advantage : 
be careful that thou losest not this ;• for to eternal ages this 
never shall return again. 

9. Or if thou, peradventure, shalt be restored to health, 
be careful, that, in the day of thy thanksgiving, thou mayest . 
not be ashamed of thyself, for having behaved thyself poor¬ 
ly and weakly upon thy bed. It will be a sensible and ex¬ 
cellent comfort to thee, and double upon thy spirit, if, when 
thou shalt worship God for restoring thee, thou shalt also 
remember, that thou didst do him service in thy suffering, 
and tell that God was hugely gracious to thee in giving thee 
the opportunity of a virtue at so easy a rate as a sickness, 
from which thou didst recover. 

g 2 2 k2 


78 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


10. Few men are so sick, but they believe that they 
may recover; and we shall seldom see a man lie down with 
a perfect persuasion, that it is his last hour: for many men 
have been sicker, and yet have recovered; but whether 
thou dost or no, thou hast a virtue to exercise, which may 
be a handmaid to thy patience. Epaphroditus was sick, 
sick unto death; and yet God had mercy upon him: and 
he hath done so to thousands, to whom he found it useful 
in the great order of things, and the events of universal 
providence. If, therefore, thou desirest to recover, here 
is cause enough of hope, and hope is designed in the arts 
of God and of the Spirit to support patience. But if thou 
recoverest not, yet there is something 1 that is matter of joy 
naturally, and very much spiritually, if thou belongest to 
God; and joy is as certain a support to patience as hope : 
and it is no small cause of being pleased, when we remem¬ 
ber, that if we recover not, our sickness shall the sooner 
sit down in rest and joy. For recovery by death, as it is 
easier and better than the recovery by a sickly health, so 
it is not so long in doing: it suffers not the tediousness of 
a creeping restitution, nor the inconvenience of surgeons 
and physicians, watchfulness and care, keepings in and 
suffering trouble, fears of relapse, and the little relics of a 
storm. 

11. While we hear, or use, or think of these remedies, 
part of the sickness is gone away, and all of it is passing. 
And if, by such instruments we stand armed and ready 
dressed beforehand, we shall avoid the mischiefs of amaze¬ 
ments and surprise ; while the accidents of sickness are 
such as were expected, and against which we stood in 
readiness, with our spirits contracted, instructed, and put 
upon the defensive. 

12. But our patience will be the better secured, if we 
consider, that it is not violently tempted by the usual ar¬ 
rests of sickness; for patience is, with reason, demanded 
while the sickness is tolerable, that is, so long as the evil 
is not too great; but if it be also eligible, and have in it 
some degrees of good, our patience will have in it the less 
difficulty and the greater necessity. This, therefore, will 
be a new stock of consideration: sickness is, in many de¬ 
grees, eligible to many men, and to many purposes. 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


79 


SECTION VI. 

Advantages of Sickness . 

1. I consider one of the great felicities of heaven con' 
sists in an immunity from sin: then we shall love God with¬ 
out mixtures of malice: then we shall enjoy without envy; 
then we shall see fuller vessels running over with glory, 
and crowned with bigger circles: and this we shall behold 
without spilling from our eyes (those vessels of joy and 
grief) any sign of anger, trouble, or a repining spirit: our 
passions shall be pure, our charity without fear, our desire 
without lust, our possessions all our own; and all in the 
inheritance of Jesus, in the richest soil of God’s eternal 
kingdom. Now half of this reason, which makes heaven 
so happy by being innocent, is also in the state of sickness, 
making the sorrows of old age smooth, and the groans of a 
sick heart apt to be joined to the music of angels; and, 
though they sound harsh to our untuned ears and discom¬ 
posed organs, yet those accents must needs be in them¬ 
selves excellent, which God loves to hear, and esteems 
them as prayers, and arguments of pity, instruments of 
mercy and grace, and preparatives to glory. 

In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immor¬ 
tality. And first, she unties the strings of vanity, that made 
her upper garment cleave to the world and sit uneasy : 
first, she puts oft’ the light and fantastic summer robe of 
lust and wanton appetite : and as soon as that cestus, that 
lascivious girdle, is thrown away, then the reins chasten 
us, and give us warning in the night; then that, which 
called us formerly to serve the manliness of the body and 
the childishness of the soul, keeps us waking, to divide the 
hours with the intervals of prayer, and to number the mi¬ 
nutes with their penitential groans; then the flesh sits un¬ 
easily and dwells in sorrow ; and then the spirit feels itself 
at ease, freed from the petulant solicitations of those pas¬ 
sions, which in health were as busy and as restless as atoms 
in the sun, always dancing, and always busy, and never sit¬ 
ting down, till a sad night of grief and uneasiness draws 
the veil, and lets them die alone in secret dishonour. 

2. Next to this ; the soul, by the help of sickness, knocks 
off the fetters of pride and vainer complacencies. Then 
she draws the curtains, and stops the light from coming in, 
and takes the pictures down, those fantastic images of self- 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


80 

love and gay remembrances of vain opinion, and popular 
noises. Then the spirit stoops into the sobrieties of humble 
thoughts, and feels corruption chiding the forwardness of 
fancy, and allaying the vapours of conceit and factious 
opinions. For humility is the soul’s grave, into which she 
enters, not to die, but to meditate and inter some of its 
troublesome appendages. There she sees the dust, and feels 
the dishonours of the body, and reads the register of all its 
sad adherences; and then she lays by all her vain reflections, 
beating upon her crystal and pure mirror from the fancies 
of strength and beauty, and little decayed prettinesses of 
the body. And when, in sickness, we forget all our knotty 
discourses of philosophy, and a syllogism makes our head 
ache, and we feel our many and loud talkings served no 
lasting end of the soul, no purpose that now we must abide 
by, and that the body is like to descend to the land, wl\ere 
all things are forgotten ; then she lays aside all her remem¬ 
brances of applauses, all her ignorant confidences, and 
cares only to know “ Christ Jesus and him crucified,” to 
know him plainly, and with much heartiness and simplicity. 
And I cannot think this to be a contemptible advantage. 
For ever since man tempted himself by his impatient de¬ 
sires of knowing, and being as God, man thinks it the finest 
thing in the world to know much, and therefore is hugely 
apt to esteem himself better than his brethren, if he knows 
some little impertinences, and them imperfectly, and that 
with infinite uncertainty; but God hath been pleased with 
a rare art, to prevent the inconveniences apt to arise by this 
passionate longing after knowledge; even by giving to 
every man a sufficient opinion of his own understanding: 
and who is there in the world, that thinks himself to be a 
fool, or indeed not fit to govern his brother? There are but 
few men, but they think they are wise enough, and every 
man believes his own opinion the soundest; and, if it were 
otherwise, men would burst themselves with envy, or else 
become irrecoverable slaves to the talking and disputing 
man. But when God intended this permission to be an 
antidote of envy, and a satisfaction and allay to the trou¬ 
blesome appetites of knowing, and made, that this universal 
opinion, by making men in some proportions equal, should 
be a keeper out or a great restraint to slavery and tyranny 
respectively; man (for so he uses to do) hath turned this 
into bitterness: for when nature had made so just a distri- 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


8] 

bution of understanding, that every man might think he 
had enough, he is not content with that, but will think he 
hath more than his brother; and whereas it might be well 
employed in restraining slavery, he hath used it to break 
off the bands of all obedience, and it ends in pride and 
schisms, in heresies and tyrannies; and it being a spiritual 
evil, it grows upon the soul with old age and flattery, with 
health and the supports of a prosperous fortune. Now 
besides the direct operations of the Spirit and a powerful 
grace, there is, in nature, left to us no remedy for this evil 
but a sharp sickness, or an equal sorrow, and allay of for¬ 
tune : and then we are humble enough to ask counsel of a 
despised priest, and to think, that even a common sentence, 
from the mouth of an appointed comforter, streams forth 
more refreshment than all our own wiser and more reputed 
discourses : then our understandings and our bodies, peep¬ 
ing through their own breaches, see their shame and their 
dishonour, their dangerous follies and their huge deceptions ; 
and they go into the clefts of the rock, and every little hand 
may cover them. 

3. Next to these, as the soul is still undressing, she takes 
off the roughness of her great and little angers and ani¬ 
mosities, and receives the oil of mercies and smooth for¬ 
giveness, fair interpretations and gentle answers, designs 
of reconcilement and Christian atonement in their places. 
For so did the wrestlers in Olympus; they stripped them¬ 
selves of all their garments, and then anointed their naked 
bodies with oil, smooth and vigorous ; with contracted 
nerves and enlarged voice they contended vehemently, till 
they obtained their victory, or their ease : and a crown of 
olive, or a huge pity, was the reward of their fierce conten¬ 
tions. Some wise men have said, that anger sticks to a 
man’s nature as inseparably, as other vices do to the 
manners of fools, and that anger is never quite cured: but 
God that hath found out remedies for all diseases, hath 
so ordered the circumstances of man, that, in the worser 
sort of men, anger and great indignation consume and 
shrivel into little peevishnesses and uneasy accents of sick¬ 
ness, and spend themselves in trifling instances; and, in 
the better and more sanctified, it goes off in prayers, and 
alms, and solemn reconcilement. And however the temp¬ 
tations of this state, such I mean, which are proper to it, 
are little and inconsiderable ; the man is apt to chide a 


82 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


servant, too bitterly, and to be discontented with his nurse, 
or not satisfied with his physician; and he rests uneasily, 
and (poor man !) nothing can please him: and indeed these 
little indecencies must be cured and stopped, lest they run 
into an inconvenience. But sickness is, in this particular, 
a little image of the state of blessed souls, or of Adam’s 
early morning in paradise, free from the troubles of lust, and 
violences of anger, and the intricacies of ambition, or the 
restlessness of covetousness. For though a man may carry 
all these along with him into his sickness, yet there he will 
not find them ; and in despite of all his own malice, his 
soul shall find some rest from labouring in the galleys, and 
baser captivity of sin : and if we value those moments of 
being in the love of God and in the kingdom of grace, 
which certainly are the beginnings of felicity, we may also 
remember, that the not sinning actually is one step of inno¬ 
cence ; and therefore that state is not intolerable, which, by 
a sensible trouble,makes it inmost instances impossible to 
commit those great sins, which make death, hell, and horrid 
damnations. And then let us but add this to it, that God 
sends sicknesses, but he never causes sin: that God is 
angry with a sinning person, but never with a man for being 
sick; that sin causes God to hate us, and sickness causes 
him to pity us; that all wise men in the world choose trou¬ 
ble rather than dishonour, affliction rather than baseness; 
and that sickness stops the torrent of sin, and interrupts its 
violence, and even to the worst men makes it to retreat 
many degrees. We may reckon sickness amongst good 
things, as we reckon rhubarb, and aloes, and child-birth, 
and labour, and obedience, and discipline : these are un¬ 
pleasant, and yet safe; they are troubles in order to bless¬ 
ings, or they are securities from danger, or the hard 
choices of a less and a more tolerable evil. 

4. Sickness is, in some sense, eligible, because it is the 
opportunity and the proper scene of exercising some vir¬ 
tues. It is that agony in which men are tried for a crown. 
And if we remember what glorious things are spoken of 
the grace of faith, that it is the life of just men, the resti¬ 
tution of the dead, in trespasses and sins, the justification 
of a sinner, the support of the weak, the confidence of the 
strong, the magazine of promises, and the title to very glo¬ 
rious rewards ; we may easily imagine, that it must have 
n it a work and a difficulty, in some proportion answer 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


83 


able to so great effects. But when we are bidden to be¬ 
lieve strange propositions, we are put upon it when we 
cannot judge, and those propositions have possessed our 
discerning faculties, and have made a party there, and are 
become domestic, before they come to be disputed; and 
then the articles of faith are so few, and are made so cre¬ 
dible, and, in their event and in their object, are so useful 
and gaining upon the affections, that he were a prodigy of 
man, and would be so esteemed, that should, in all our 
present circumstances, disbelieve any point of faith: and 
all is well as long as the sun shines, and the fair breath of 
heaven gently wafts us to our own purposes. But if you 
will try the excellency, and feel the work of faith, place 
the man in a persecution, let him ride in a storm, let his 
bones be broken with sorrow, and his eyelids loosened with 
sickness, let his bread be dipped in tears, and all the 
daughters of music be brought low; let God commence a 
quarrel against him, and be bitter in the accents of his an¬ 
ger or his discipline; then God tries your faith. Can you 
then trust his goodness; and believe him to be a father, 
when you groan under his rod ? Can you rely upon all the 
strange propositions of Scripture, and be content to perish, 
if they be not true ? Can you receive comfort in the dis¬ 
courses of death and heaven, of immortality and the resur¬ 
rection, of the death of Christ and conforming to his suf¬ 
ferings? Truth is, there are but two great periods in which 
faith demonstrates itself to be a powerful and mighty 
grace : and they are persecution and the approaches of 
death for the passive part, and a temptation for the active. 
In the days of pleasure and the night of pain, faith is to 
fight her agonisticon , to contend for mastery: and faith 
overcomes all alluring and fond temptations to sin, and 
faith overcomes all our weaknesses and faintings in our 
troubles. By the faith of the promises we learn to despise 
the world, choosing those objects which faith discovers; 
and, by expectation of the same promises, we are com¬ 
forted in all our sorrows, and enabled to look through and 
see beyond the cloud: but the vigour of it is pressed and 
called forth, when all our fine discourses come to be re¬ 
duced to practice. For in our health and clearer days it 
is easy to talk of putting trust in God ; we readily trust 
him for life, when we are in health; for provisions, when 
we have fair revenues; and for deliverance, when we are 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


34 

newly escaped: but let us come to sit upon the margent 
of our grave, and let a tyrant lean hard upon our fortunes 
and dwell upon our wrong, let the storm arise, and the 
keel toss till the cordage crack, or that all our hopes bulge 
under us, and descend into the hollowness of sad misfor¬ 
tunes ; then can you believe, when you neither hear, nor 
see, nor feel any thing but objections ? This is the proper 
work of sickness : faith is then brought into the theatre; 
and so exercised, that if it abides but to the end of the con¬ 
tention, we may see that work of faith, which God will 
hugely crown. The same I say of hope, and of charity, or 
the love of God, and of patience, which is a grace produced 
from the mixtures of all these : they are virtues which are 
greedy of danger, and no man was ever honoured by any 
wise or discerning person for dining upon Persian carpets, 
nor rewarded with a crown for being at ease. It was the 
fire that did honour to Mutius Scaevola; poverty made 
Fabricius famous; Rutilius was made excellent by banish¬ 
ment ; Regulus by torments; Socrates by prison; Cato 
by his death: and God hath crowned the memory of Job 
with a wreath of glory, because he sat upon his dunghill 
wisely and temperately; and his potsherd and his groans, 
mingled with praises and justifications of God, pleased him 
like an anthem, sung by angels in the morning of the re¬ 
surrection. God could not choose but be pleased with the 
delicious accents of martyrs, when in their tortures they cried 
out nothing but “ Holy Jesus” and “ Blessed be God 
and they also themselves, who, with a hearty designation 
to the Divine pleasure, can delight in God’s severe dispen¬ 
sation, will have the transportations of cherubim, when 
they enter into the joys of God. If God be delicious to 
his servants when he smites them, he will be nothing but 
ravishments and ecstacies to their spirits, when he refreshes 
them with the overflowings of joy in the day of recom¬ 
penses. No man is more miserable than he that hath no 
adversity: that man is not tried, whether he be good or 
bad: and God never crowns those virtues, which are onlv 
faculties and dispositions: but every act of virtue is an in¬ 
gredient into reward. And we see many children fairly 
planted, whose parts of nature were never dressed by art, 
nor called from the furrows of their first possibilities by 
discipline and institution, and they dwell for ever in igno¬ 
rance, and converse with beasts; and yet, if they had been 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


85 


dressed and exercised, might have stood at the chairs of 
princes, or spoken parables amongst the rulers of cities. 
Our virtues are but in the seed, when the grace of God 
comes upon us first: but this grace must be thrown into 
broken furrows, and must twice feel the cold, and twice 
feel the heat, and be softened with storms and showers, 
and then it will arise into fruitfulness and harvests. And 
what is there in the world to distinguish virtues from dis¬ 
honours, or the valour of Caesar from the softness of the 
Egyptian eunuchs, or that can make any thing reward- 
able, but the labour and the danger, the pain and the dif¬ 
ficulty? Virfue could not be any thing but sensuality, if it 
were the entertainment of our senses and fond desires ; 
and Apicius had been the noblest of all the Romans, if 
feeding a great appetite and despising the severities of tem¬ 
perance had been the work and proper employment of a 
wise man. But otherwise do fathers, and otherwise do 
mothers, handle their children. These soften them with 
kisses and imperfect noises, with the pap and breast-milk 
of soft endearments; they rescue them from tutors, and 
snatch them from discipline ; they desire to keep them fat 
and warm, and their feet dry, and their bellies full; and 
then the children govern, and cry, and prove fools and trou¬ 
blesome, so long as the feminine republic does endure. 
But fathers, because they design to have their children 
wise and valiant, apt for counsel or for arms, send them to 
severe governments, and tie them to study, to hard labour, 
and afflictive contingences. They rejoice, when the bold 
boy strikes a lion with his hunting spear, and shrinks not 
when the beast comes to affright his early courage. Soft¬ 
ness is for slaves and beasts, for minstrels and useless per¬ 
sons, for such who cannot ascend higher than the state of 
a fair ox, or a servant entertained for vainer offices: but 
the man that designs his son for noble employments, to 
honours and to triumphs, to consular dignities and presi¬ 
dencies of councils, loves to see him pale with study, or 
panting with labour, hardened with sufferance, or eminent 
by dangers. And so God dresses us for heaven. He loves 
to see us struggling with a disease, and resisting the devil, 
and contesting against the weaknesses of nature, and 
against hope to believe in hope, resigning ourselves to God’s 
will, praying him to choose for us, and dying in all things 
but faith and its blessed consequents; ut ad officium cum 
h 2 L 


86 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


periculo simus prompti ; and the danger and the resistance 
shall endear the office. For so have I known the boister¬ 
ous north wind pass through the yielding air, which opened 
its bosom, and appeased its violence by entertaining it with 
easy compliance in all the regions of its reception : but 
when the same breath of heaven hath been checked with 
the stiffness of a tower, or the united strength of a wood, 
it grew mighty and dwelt there, and made the highest 
branches stoop, and make a smooth path for it on the top 
of all its glories. So is sickness, and so is the grace of 
God: when sickness hath made the difficulty, then God’s 
grace hath made a triumph, and by doubling its power 
hath created new proportions of a reward : and then shows 
its biggest glory, when it hath the greatest difficulty to 
master, the greatest weaknesses to support, the most busy 
temptations to contest with ; for so God loves, that his 
strength should be seen in our weakness and our danger. 
Happy is that state of life, in which our services to God are 
the dearest and the most expensive. 

5. Sickness hath some degrees of eligibility, at least by 
an after-choice; because to all persons, which are within 
the possibilities and state of pardon, it becomes a great in¬ 
strument of pardon for sins. For as God seldom rewards 
here and hereafter too: so it is not very often, that he pun¬ 
ishes in both states. In great and final sins, he doth so; 
but we find it expressed only in the case of the sin against 
the Holy Ghost, “ which shall never be forgiven in this 
world, nor in the world to come,” that is, it shall be pun¬ 
ished in both worlds, and the infelicities of this world shall 
but usher in the intolerable calamities of the next. But 
this is in a case of extremity, and in sins of an unpardon¬ 
able malice : in those lesser stages of death, which are de¬ 
viations from the rule, and not a destruction and perfect 
antinomy to the whole institution, God very often smites 
with his rod of sickness, that he may not for ever be slay¬ 
ing the soul with eternal death. “ I will visit their offences 
with the rod, and their sin with scourges; neverthe¬ 
less my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, 
nor suffer my truth to fail.”* And there is, in the New Tes¬ 
tament, a delivering over to Satan,f and a consequent buf¬ 
feting, for the mortification of the flesh indeed, but that 
the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord. And tc 
* Psal lxxxix. 32, 33. t 1 Cor. v. 5. 1 Tim. i. 20. 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


87 


some persons the utmost process of God’s anger reaches 
but to a sharp sickness, or at most but to a temporal death ; 
and then the little momentary anger is spent, and expires 
in rest and a quiet grave. Origen, St. Augustine, and 
Cassian say, concerning Ananias and Sapphira, that they 
were slain with a sudden death, that by such a judgment 
their sin might be punished, and their guilt expiated, and 
their persons reserved for mercy in the day of judgment. 
And God cuts off many of his children from the land of 
the living; and yet, when they are numbered amongst our 
dead, he finds them in the book of life, written amongst 
those that shall live to him for ever. And thus it happened 
to many new Christians, in the church of Corinth, for their 
little indecencies and disorders in the circumstances of re¬ 
ceiving the holy sacrament. St. Paul says, that “ many 
amongst them were sick, many were weak, and some were 
fallen asleep.”* He expresses the Divine anger against 
those persons in no louder accents ,* which is according to 
the style of the New Testament, where all the great trans¬ 
actions of duty and reproof are generally made upon the 
stock of heaven, and hell is plainly a reserve, and a period 
set to the declaration of God’s wrath. For God knows, 
that the torments of hell are so horrid, so # insupportable a 
calamity, that he is not easy and apt to cast those souls, 
which he hath taken so much care, and hath been at so 
much expense to save, into the eternal never-dying flames 
of hell, lightly, for smaller sins, or after a fairly-begun re¬ 
pentance, and in the midst of holy desires to finish it; but 
God takes such penalties, and exacts such fines of us, which 
we may pay salvo contenemcnto , saving the main stake of 
all, even our precious souls. And therefore St. Augustine 
prayed to God in his penitential sorrows, “ Here, O Lord, 
burn and cut my flesh, that thou mayest spare me for ever.” 
For so said our blessed Saviour, “ Every sacrifice must be 
seasoned with salt, and every sacrifice must be burnt with 
fire;” that is, we must abide in the state of grace; and, if 
we have committed sins, we must expect to be put into 
the state of affliction; and yet the sacrifice will send up a 
right and untroubled cloud, and a sweet smell to join with 
the incense of the altar, where the eternal priest offers a 
never ceasing sacrifice. And now I have said a thing, 
against which tjiere can be no exceptions, and of which 

* 1 Cor. xi. 30. 


58 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


no just reason can make abatement. For when sickness, 
which is the condition of our nature, is called for with pur¬ 
poses of redemption ; when w T e are sent to death to se¬ 
cure eternal life ; when God strikes us, that he may spare 
us, it shows, that we have done things which he essential¬ 
ly hates; and therefore we must be smitten with the rod 
of God: but, in the midst of judgment, God remember? 
mercy, and makes the rod to be medicinal ; and, like the 
rod of God in the hand of Aaron, to shoot forth buds and 
leaves, and almonds, hopes and mercies, and eternal re¬ 
compenses, in the day of restitution. This is so great a 
good to us, if it be well conducted in all the channels of its 
intention and design, that if we had put off the objections 
of the flesh, with abstractions, contempts, and separations, 
so as we ought to do, it w r ere as earnestly to be prayed 
for, as any gay blessing that crowns our cups with joy, 
and our heads with garlands and forgetfulness. But this 
was it which I said, that this may, nay, that it ought to be 
chosen, at least by an after election ; for so said St. Paul, 
“ If we judge ourselves, we shall not be condemned of the 
Lord that is, if we judge ourselves worthy of the sick¬ 
ness, if we acknowledge and confess God’s justice in smit¬ 
ing us, if we tal^p the rod of God in our own hands, and 
are willing to imprint it in the flesh, we are workers to¬ 
gether with God in the infliction; and then the sickness, 
beginning and being managed in the virtue of repentance, 
and patience, and resignation, and charity, will end in peace, 
and pardon, and justification, and consignation to glorv. 
That I have spoken truth, I have brought God’s Spirit 
speaking in Scripture for a wdtness. But if this be true, 
there are not many states of life that have advantages, 
w hich can outweigh this great instrument of security to our 
final condition. Moses died at the mouth of the Lord, 
said the story; he died with the kisses of the Lord’s 
mouth ;* (so the Chaldee paraphrase;) it was the greatest 
act of kindness that God did to his servant Moses ; he 
kissed him, and he died. But I have some things to ob¬ 
serve for the better finishing this consideration. 

1. All these advantages and lessenings of evils in the 
state of sickness are only upon the stock of virtue and re¬ 
ligion. There is nothing can make sickness in any sense 
eligible, or in many senses tolerable, but. only the grace 

* Deut. xxxiv. 5. 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


89 

of God: that only turns sickness into easiness and felicity, 
which also turns it into virtue. For whosoever goes about 
to comfort a vicious person, when he lies sick upon his bed, 
can only discourse of the necessities of nature, of the un¬ 
avoidableness of the suffering, of the accidental vexations 
and increase of torments by impatience, of the fellowship of 
all the sons of Adam, and such other little considerations: 
which indeed, if sadly reflected upon, and found to stand 
alone, teach him nothing but the degree of his calamity, 
and the evil of his condition, and teach him such a patience 
and minister to him such a comfort, which can only make 
him to observe decent gestures in his sickness, and to 
converse with his friends and standers-by, so as may do 
them comfort, and ease their funeral and civil complaints; 
but do him no true advantage; for, all that may be spoken 
to a beast when he is crowned with nair-laces, and bound 
with fillets to the altar, to bleed to death to appease the 
anger of the Deity, and to ease the burden of his relatives. 
And indeed what comfort can he receive, whose sickness, 
as it looks back, is an effect of God’s indignation and fierce 
vengeance, and if it goes forward and enters into the gates 
of the grave, is a beginning of a sorrow, that shall never 
have an ending? But when the sickness is a messenger 
sent from a chastising father; when it first turns into degrees 
of innocence, and then into virtues, and thence into pardon ; 
this is no misery, but such a method of the Divine economy 
and dispensation, as resolves to bring us to heaven with¬ 
out any new impositions, but merely upon the stock and 
charges of nature. 

2. Let it be observed, that these advantages, which 
spring from sickness, are not in all instances of virtue, nor 
to all persons. Sickness is the proper scene for patience 
and resignation, for all the passive graces of a Christian, 
for faith and hope, and for some single acts of the love of 
God. But sickness is not a fit station for a penitent; and 
it can serve the ends of the grace of repentance but acci¬ 
dentally. Sickness may begin a repentance, if God con¬ 
tinues life, and if we co-operate with the Divine grace; or 
sickness may help to alleviate the wrath of God, and to 
facilitate the pardon, if all the other parts of this duty be 
performed in our healthful state : so that it may serve at 
the entrance in, or at the going out. But sickness, at nc 
hand, is a good stage to represent all the substantial parts 
h 2 2 l 2 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


90 

of this duty. 1. It invites to it; 2. It makes it appear ne 
cessary; 3. It takes off the fancies of vanity; 4. It attem* 
pers the spirit; 5. It cures hypocrisy; 6. It tames the 
fumes of pride ; 7. It is the school of patience ; 8. And by 
taking us from off the brisker relishes of the world, it 
makes us with more gust to taste the things of the Spirit; 
and all this, only when God fits the circumstances of the 
sickness so is to consist with acts of reason, consideration, 
choice, and a present and reflecting mind; which then 
God sends, when he means that the sickness of the body 
should be the cure of the soul. But let no man so rely 
upon it, as by design, to trust the beginning, the progress, 
and the consummation of our piety to such an estate, which 
for ever leaves it imperfect: and though to some persons 
it adds degrees, and ministers opportunities, and exercises 
single acts with great advantage, in passive graces; yet it 
is never an entire or sufficient instrument for the change 
of our condition from the state of death to the liberty and 
life of the sons of God. 

3. It were good, if we would transact the affairs of our 
souls with nobleness and ingenuity, and that we would 
by an early and forward religion, prevent the necessary 
arts of the Divine providence. It is true, that God cures 
some by incision, by fire and torments; but these are ever 
the more obstinate and more unrelenting natures. God’s 
providence is not so afflictive and full of trouble, as that it 
hath placed sickness and infirmity amongst things simply 
necessary; and, in most persons, it is but a sickly and an 
effeminate virtue, which is imprinted upon our spirits with 
fears, and the sorrows of a fever, or a peevish consumption. 
It is but a miserable remedy to be beholden to a sickness 
for our health: and though it be better to suffer the loss of 
a finger, than that the arm and the whole body should pu¬ 
trefy, yet even then also it is a trouble and an evil to lose 
a finger. He that mends with sickness, pares the nails of 
the beast, when they have already torn off part of the flesh * 
but he that would have a sickness become a clear and an 
entire blessing, a thing indeed to be reckoned among the 
good things of God, and the evil things of the world, must 
lead a holy life, and judge himself with an early sentence, 
and so order the affairs of his soul, that, in the usual me¬ 
thod of God’s saving us, there may be nothing left to be 
done, but that such virtues should be exercised, which 


REMEDIES AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 


91 


God intends to crown : and then, as when the Athenians 
upon a day of battle, with longing and uncertain souls, 
sitting in their common-hall expecting what would be ihe 
sentence of the day, at last received a messenger, who 
only had breath enough left him to say, “We are con¬ 
querors,” and so died; so shall the sick person, who hath 
“ fought a good fight and kept the faith,” and only waits 
for his dissolution and his sentence, breathe forth his spirit 
with the accents of a conqueror, and his sickness, and his 
death shall only make the mercy and the virtue more 
illustrious. 

But for the sickness itself; if all the calumnies were 
true concerning it, with which it is aspersed, yet it is far 
to be preferred before the most pleasant sin, and before a 
great secular business and a temporal care: and some men 
wake as much in the foldings of the softest beds, as others 
on the cross : and sometimes the very weight of sorrow 
and the weariness of a sickness press the spirit into slum¬ 
bers and the images of rest, when the intemperate or the 
lustful person rolls upon his uneasy thorns, and sleep is 
departed from his eyes. Certain it is, some sickness is a 
blessing. Indeed, blindness were a most accursed thing, 
if no man were ever blind, but he whose eyes were pulled 
out with tortures of burning basins: and if sickness were 
always a testimony of God’s anger, and a violence to a 
man’s whole condition, then it were a huge calamity. But 
because God sends it to his servants, to his children, to 
little infants, to apostles and saints, with designs of mercy, 
to preserve their innocence, to overcome temptation, to try 
their virtue, to fit them for rewards; it is certain that sick¬ 
ness never is an evil but by our own faults ; and if we will 
do our duty, we shall be sure to turn it into a blessing. 
If the sickness be great, it may end in death, and the 
greater it is the sooner: and if it be very little, it hath 
great intervals of rest: if it be between both, we may be 
masters of it, and, by serving the ends of Providence, serve 
also the perfective end of human nature, and enter into the 
possession of everlasting mercies. 

The sum is this: He that is afraid of pain, is afraid of 
his own nature ; and if his fear be violent, it is a sign, his 
patience is none at. all; and an impatient person is not 
ready-dressed for heaven. None but suffering, humble, 


M2 


REMEDIES AGAINST 


and patient persons can go to heaven; and when God 
hath given us the whole stage of our life to exercise all the 
active virtues of religion, it is necessary in the state of vir¬ 
tues, that some portion and period of our lives be assigned 
to passive graces; for patience, for Christian fortitude, for 
resignation, or conformity to the Divine will. But as the 
violent fear of sickness makes us impatient, so it will 
make our death without comfort and without religion; and 
we shall go off from our stage of actions and sufferings 
with an unhandsome exit, because we were willing to re¬ 
ceive the kindness of God, when he expressed it as we 
listed; but we would not suffer him to be kind and gra¬ 
cious to us in his own method, nor were willing to exercise 
and improve our virtues at the charge of a sharp fever, or 
a lingering consumption. “ Woe be to the man, that hath 
lost patience; for what will he do, when the Lord shall 
visit him 

SECTION VII. 

The second Temptation proper to the State of Sickness , 
Fear of Death , with its Remedies . 

There is nothing which can make sickness unsanctified, 
but the same also will give us cause to fear death. If 
therefore, we so order cur affairs and spirits that we do not 
fear death, our sickness may easily become our advantage ; 
and we can then receive counsel, and consider, and do 
those acts of virtue, which are, in that state, the proper 
services of God; and such which men in bondage and fear 
are not capable of doing, or of advices how they should, 
when they come to the appointed days of mourning. And 
indeed, if men would but place their design of being hap¬ 
py in the nobleness, courage, and perfect resolutions of 
doing handsome things, and passing through our unavoidable 
necessities, in the contempt and despite of the things of 
this world, and in holy living, and the perfective desires of 
our natures, the longings and pursuances after heaven; 
it is certain, they could not be made miserable by chance 
and change, by sickness and death. But we are so soften¬ 
ed, and made effeminate with delicate thoughts, and 
meditations of ease, and brutish satisfactions, that, if our 
death come before we have seized upon a great fortune 

* Eccles. ii. 15. 


FEAR OF DEATH. 


9 8 

or enjoy the promises of the fortune-tellers, we esteem our¬ 
selves to be robbed of our goods, to be mocked, and mi¬ 
serable. Hence it comes, that men are impatient of the 
thoughts of death : hence comes those arts of protraction 
and delaying the significations of old age ,* thinking to de¬ 
ceive the world, men cozen themselves, and by representing 
themselves youthful, they certainly continue their vanity, 
till Proserpina pull the peruke from their heads. We cannot 
deceive God and nature : for a coffin is a coffin, though it 
be covered with a pompous veil ; and the minutes of our 
time strike on, and are counted by angels, till the period 
comes, which must cause the passing-bell to give warning 
to all the neighbours, that thou art dead, and they must be 
so : and nothing can excuse or retard this. And if our 
death could be put off a little longer, what advantage can 
it be, in thy accounts of nature and felicity ? They that 
three thousand years agone, died unwillingly, and stopped 
death two days, or stayed it a week, what is their gain ? 
where is that week ? And poor-spirited men use arts of 
protraction, and make their persons pitiable, but their con¬ 
dition contemptible ; being like the poor sinners at Noah’s 
flood : the waters drove them out of their lower rooms: 
then they crept up to the roof, having lasted half a day 
longer, and then they knew not how to get down : some 
crept upon the top-branch of a tree, and some climbed up 
to a mountain, and stayed, it may be, three days longer; but 
all that while they endured a worse torment than death : 
they lived with amazement, and were distracted with the 
ruins of mankind, and the horror of a universal deluge. 

Remedies against the Fear of Death , by way of Consideration . 

1. God having in this world placed us in a sea, and 
troubled the sea with a continual storm, hath appointed 
the church for a ship, and religion to be the stern ; but 
there is no haven or port but death. Death is that har¬ 
bour, whither God hath designed every one, that there he 
may find rest from the troubles of the world. How many 
of the noblest Romans have taken death for sanctuary, 
and have esteemed it less than shame or a mean dishonour? 
and Caesar was cruel to Domitius, captain of Corfinium, 
when he had taken the town from him, that he refused to 
sign his petition of death. Death would have hid his head 
with honour, but that cruel mercy reserved him to the 


REMEDIES AGAINST 


94 

shame of surviving his disgrace. The holy Scripture, giv¬ 
ing an account of the reasons of the Divine providence 
taking godly men from this world, and shutting them up 
in a hasty grave, says, “ that they are taken from the evils 
to come and concerning ourselves it is certain, if we had 
ten years agone taken seizure of our portion of dust, death 
had not taken us from good things, but from infinite evils, 
such which the sun hath seldom seen. Did not Priamus 
weep oftener than Troilus 1 and happy had he been, if he 
had died, when his sons were living, and his kingdom safe 
and houses full, and his city unburnt. It was a long life 
that made him miserable, and an early death only could 
have secured his fortune. And it hath happened many 
times, that persons of a fair life and a clear reputation, of 
a good fortune and an honourable name, have been tempted 
in their age to folly and vanity, have fallen under the dis¬ 
grace of dotage, or into an unfortunate marriage, or have 
besotted themselves with drinking, or outlived their for¬ 
tunes, or become tedious to their friends, or are afflicted 
with lingering and vexatious diseases, or lived to see their 
excellent parts buried, and cannot understand the wise 
discourses and productions of their younger years. In all 
these cases, and infinite more, do not all the world say, 
that it had been better, this man had died sooner ? But so 
have I known passionate women to shriek aloud, when their 
nearest relatives were dying, and that horrid shriek hath 
stayed the spirit of the man awhile to wonder at the folly, 
and represent the inconvenience; and the dying person 
hath lived one day longer full of pain, amazed with an in¬ 
determinate spirit, distorted with convulsions, and only 
come again to act one scene more of a new calamity, and 
to die with less decency. So also do very many men; 
with passion and a troubled interest they strive to continue 
their life longer; and, it may be, they escape this sickness, 
and live to fall into a disgrace: they escape the storm, and 
fall into the hands of pirates; and, instead of dying with 
liberty, they live like slaves, miserable and despised, ser¬ 
vants to a little time, and sottish admirers of the breath of 
their own lungs. Paulus Almilius did handsomely reprove 
the cowardice of the King of Macedon, who begged of him, 
for pity’s sake and humanity, that having conquered him 
and taken his kingdom from him, he would be content 
with that, and not lead him in triumph a prisoner to Rome, 


FEAR OF DEATH. 


95 


-dEmilius told him, he need not be beholden to him for that 
himself might prevent that in despite of him. But the 
timorous king durst not die. But certainly every wise 
man will easily believe, that it had been better the Mace¬ 
donian kings should have died in battle, than protract 
their life so long, till some of them came to be scriveners 
and joiners at Rome : or that the tyrant of Sicily better 
had perished in the Adriatic, than to be wafted to Corinth 
safely, and there turn schoolmaster. It is a sad calamity, 
that the fear of death shall so imbecile man’s courage and 
understanding, that he dares not suffer the remedy of all 
his calamities; but that he lives to say as Liberius did, “ I 
have lived this one day longer than I should.” Either, 
therefore, let us be willing to die, when God calls, or let 
us never more complain of the calamities of our life, which 
we feel so sharp and numerous. And when God sends 
his angel to us with the scroll of death, let us look on it as 
an act of mercy, to prevent many sins, and many calamities 
of a longer life, and lay our heads down softly, and go to 
sleep without wrangling like babies and froward children. 
For a man (at least) gets this by death, that his calamities 
are not immortal. 

But I do not only consider death by the advantages of 
comparison; but if we look on it in itself, it is no such for¬ 
midable thing, if we view it on both sides, and handle it, 
and consider all its appendages. 

2. It is necessary, and therefore not intolerable : and 
nothing is to be esteemed evil, which God and nature have 
fixed with eternal sanctions. It is a law of God, it is a 
punishment of our sins, and it is the constitution of our 
nature. Two differing substances were joined together 
with the breath of God, and when that breath is taken 
away, they part asunder, and return to their several prin¬ 
ciples ; the soul to God our father, the body to the earth 
our mother : and what in all this is evil? Surely nothing, 
but that we are men: nothing, but that we were not born 
immortal: but by declining this change with great passion, 
or receiving it with a huge natural fear, we accuse the 
Divine providence with tyranny, and exclaim against our 
natural constitution, and are discontent that we are men. 

3. It is a thing, that is no great matter in itself; if we 
consider, that we die daily, that it meets us in every acci¬ 
dent, that every creature carries a dart along with it, and 


96 


REMEDIES AGAINST 


can kill us. And therefore, when Lysimachus threatened 
Theodorus to kill him, he told him, that was no great mat¬ 
ter to do, and he could do no more than the catharides 
could : a little fly could do as much. 

4. It is a thing that every one suffers, even persons of 
the lowest resolution, of the meanest virtue, of no breeding, 
of no discourse. Take away but the pomps of death, the 
disguises and solemn bugbears, the tinsel, and the actings 
by candle-light, and proper and fantastic ceremonies, the 
minstrels and the noise-makers, the women and the weep¬ 
ers, the swoonings and the shriekings, the nurses and the 
physicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred 
and the watches; and then to die is easy, ready and quitted 
from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same harm¬ 
less thing, that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, or a' 
maid-servant to-day; and at the same time in which you 
die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you, 
some w ise men, and many fools; and the wisdom of the 
first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter does not 
make him unable to die. 

5. Of all the evils of the world which are reproached 
with an evil character, death is the most innocent of its 
accusation. For when it is present, it hurts nobody; and 
when it is absent, it is indeed troublesome, but the trouble 
is owing to our fears, not to the affrighting and mistaken 
object; and besides this, if it were an evil, it is so tran¬ 
sient, that it passes like the instant or undiscerned portion 
of the present time ; and either it is past, or it is not yet; 
for just when it is, no man hath reason to complain of so 
insensible, so sudden, so undiscerned a change. 

6. It is so harmless a thing, that no good man was ever 
thought the more miserable for dying, but much the hap¬ 
pier. When men saw the graves of Calatinus, of the 
Servilii, the Scipios, the Metelli, did ever any man among 
the wisest Romans think them unhappy ? And when St. 
Paul fell under the sword of Nero, and St. Peter died upon 
the cross, and St. Stephen from a heap of stones was car¬ 
ried into an easier grave, they that made great lamentation 
over them, wept for their owm interest, and after the man¬ 
ner of men ; but the martyrs were accounted happy, and 
their days kept solemnly, and their memories preserved in 
never-dying honours. When St. Hilary, bishop of Poic- 
tiers in France, went into the East to reprove the Aria* 


FEAR OF DEATH. 


97 

heresy, he heard, that a young noble gentleman treated 
with his daughter Abra for marriage. The bishop wrote 
to his daughter, that she should not engage her promise, 
nor do countenance to that request, because he had pro¬ 
vided for her a husband fair, rich, wise, and noble, far be¬ 
yond her present offer. The event of which was this : she 
obeyed; and when her father returned from his eastern 
triumph to his western charge, he prayed to God that his 
daughter might die quickly : and God heard his prayers, 
and Christ took her into his bosom, entertaining her with 
antepasts and caresses of holy love, till the day of the 
marriage supper of the Lamb shall come. But when the 
Bishop’s wife observed this event, and understood of the 
good man her husband what was done, and why, she never 
let him alone, till he obtained the same favour for her; and 
she also, at the prayers of St. Hilary, went into a more early 
grave and a bed of joys. 

7. It is a sottish and an unlearned thing to reckon the 
time of our life, as it is short or long, to be good or evil 
fortune ; life in itself being neither good nor bad, but just 
as we make it; and therefore so is death. 

8. But when we consider, death is not only better than 
a miserable life, not only an easy and innocent thing in it¬ 
self, but also that it is a slate of advantage, we shall have 
reason not to double the sharpnesses of our sickness by 
our fear of death. Certain it is, death hath some good 
upon its proper stock; praise, and a fair memory, a reve¬ 
rence and religion towards them so great, that it s counted 
dishonest to speak evil of the dead; then they rest in 
peace, and are quiet front their labours, and are designed 
to immortality. Cleobis and Biton, Trophonius and Aga- 
medes, had an early death sent them as a reward ; to the 
former, for their piety to their mother; to the latter, for 
building of a temple. To this all those arguments will 
minister, which relate the advantages of the state of sepa¬ 
ration and resurrection. 

SECTION VIII. 

Remedies against Fear of Death by way of Exercise. 

1. He that would willingly be fearless of death, must 
learn to despise the world ; he must neither love any thing 
passionately, nor be proud of any circumstance of his life. 
“ O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man 
i 2 M 


9.S 


REMEDIES AGAINST 


that livetli at rest in his possessions, to a man that hath 
nothing 1 to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things; 
yea, unto him that is yet able to receive meat!” said the son 
of Sirach. But the parts of this exercise help each other. 
If a man be not incorporated in all his passions to the 
things of this world, he will less fear to be divorced from 
them by a supervening death; and yet because he must 
part with them all in death, it is but reasonable, he should 
not be passionate for so fugitive and transient interest. 
But if any man thinks well of himself for being a handsome 
person, or if he be stronger and wiser than his neighbours, 
he must remember, that what he boasts of will decline into 
weakness and dishonour; but that very boasting and com¬ 
placency will make death keener and more unwelcome, 
because it comes to take him from his confidences and 
pleasures, making his beauty equal to those ladies that 
have slept some years in charnel-houses, and their strength 
not so stubborn as the breath of an infant, and their wis 
dom such, which can be looked for in the land, where all 
things are forgotten. 

2. He that would not fear death, must strengthen his 
spirits with the proper instruments of Christian fortitude. 
All men are resolved upon this, that to bear grief honestly 
and temperately, and to die willingly and nobly, is the duty 
of a good and valiant man ; and they that are not so, are 
vicious, and fools, and cowards. All men praise the valiant 
and honest; and that, which the very heathen admired in 
their noblest examples, is especially patience and contempt 
of death. Zeno Eleates endured torments rather than dis¬ 
cover his friends, or betray them, to the danger of the ty¬ 
rant : and Calanus, the barbarous and unlearned Indian, 
willingly suffered himself to be burned alive : and all the 
women did so, to do honour to their husband’s funerals, 
and to represent and prove their affections great to their 
lords. The religion of a Christian does more command 
fortitude, than ever did any institution ; for we are com¬ 
manded to be willing to die for Christ, to die for the bre¬ 
thren, to die rather than to give offence or scandal : the 
effect of which is this, that he, that is instructed to do the 
necessary parts of his duty, is, by the same instrument, forti¬ 
fied against death: as he that does his duty, need not fear 
death, so neither shall he; the parts of his duty are parts 
of his security. It is certainly a great baseness and pusil- 


FEAR OF DEATH. 


99 

lanimity of spirit that makes death terrible, and extremely 
to be avoided. 

3. Christian prudence is a great security against the 
fear of death. For if we be afraid of death, it is but rea¬ 
sonable to use all spiritual arts to take off the apprehension 
ol the evil: but therefore we ought to remove our fear, 
because fear gives to death wings, and spurs, and darts. 
Death hastens to a fearful man : if therefore you would 
make death harmless and slow, to throw off fear is the way 
to do it ; and prayer is the way to do that. If therefore 
you be afraid of death, consider you will have less need to 
fear it, by how much the less you do fear it: and so cure 
your direct fear by a reflex act of prudence and considera¬ 
tion. Fannius had not died so soon, if he had not feared 
death : and when Cneius Carbo begged the respite of a lit¬ 
tle time for a base employment of the soldiers of Pompey, 
he got nothing, but that the baseness of his fear dishonour¬ 
ed the dignity of his third consulship : and he chose to die 
in a place where none but his meanest servants should 
have seen him. I remember a story of the wrestler Poly- 
damas, that, running into a cave to avoid the storm, the wa¬ 
ter at last swelled so high, that it began to press that 
hollowness to a ruin: which when his fellows espied, they 
chose to enter into the common fate of all men, and went 
abroad : but Polydamas thought by his strength to support 
the earth, till its intolerable weight crushed him into flat¬ 
ness and a grave. Many men run for a shelter to a place, 
and they only find a remedy for their fears by feeling the 
worst of evils. Fear itself finds no sanctuary but the worst 
of sufferance: and they that fly from a battle, are exposed 
to the mercy and fury of the pursuers, who, if they faced 
about, were as well disposed to give laws of life and death 
as to take them, and at worst can but die nobly; but now, 
even at the very best, they live shamefully, or die timorous¬ 
ly. Courage is the greatest security ; for it does most com¬ 
monly safeguard the man, but always rescues the condition 
from an intolerable evil. 

4. If thou wilt be fearless of death, endeavour to be in 
love with the felicities of saints and angels, and be once 
persuaded to believe, that there is a condition of living bet¬ 
ter than this; that there are creatures more noble than w’e; 
that above there is a country better than ours ; that the in¬ 
habitants know more and know better, and are in places ol 


REMEDIES AGAINST 


100 

rest and desire; and first learn to value it, and then learn 
to purchase it, and death cannot be a formidable thing, 
which lets us into so much joy and so much felicity. And 
indeed who would not think his condition mended, if he 
passed from conversing with dull mortals, with ignorant 
and foolish persons, with tyrants and enemies of learning, 
to converse with Homer and Plato, with Socrates and .Ci¬ 
cero, with Plutarch and Fabricius'? So the heathens spe¬ 
culated ; but we consider higher. “ The dead that die in 
the Lord,” shall converse with St. Paul, and all the college 
of the apostles, and all the saints and martyrs, with all the 
good men, whose memory we preserve in honour, with ex¬ 
cellent kings and holy bishops, and with the great shepherd 
and bishop of our souls Jesus Christ, and with God him¬ 
self. For “ Christ died for us, that, whether we wake or 
sleep, we might live together with him.” Then we shall 
be free from lust and envy, from fear and rage, from covet¬ 
ousness and sorrow, from tears and cowardice : and these 
indeed properly are the only evils that are contrary to feli¬ 
city and wisdom. Then we shall see strange things, and 
know new propositions, and all things in another manner, 
and to higher purposes. Cleombrotus was.so taken with 
this speculation, that, having learned from Plato’s Phaedon 
the soul’s abode, he had not patience to stay nature’s dull 
leisure but leaped from a wall to his portion of immortality. 
And when Pomponius Atticus resolved to die by famine, to 
ease the great pains of his gout, in the abstinence of two 
days he found his foot at ease : but when he began to feel 
the pleasures of an approaching death, and the delicacies 
of that ease he was to inherit below, he would not withdraw 
his foot, but went on and finished his death: and so did 
Cleanthes. And every wise man will despise the little evils 
of that state, which indeed is the daughter of fear, but the 
mother of rest, and peace, and felicity. 

5. If God should say to us, Cast thyself into the sea, (as 
Christ did to St. Peter, or as God concerning Jonas,) I have 
provided for thee a dolphin, or a whale, oi a port, a safety 
or a deliverance, security or a reward, were we not in¬ 
credulous and pusillanimous persons, if we should trem¬ 
ble to put such a felicity into act, and ourselves into pos¬ 
session ? The very duty of resignation and the love of our 
own interest are good antidotes against fear. In forty or 
fifty years we find evils enough, and arguments enough 


FEAR OF DEATH. 


101 

to make us weary of this life : and to a good man there are 
very many more reasons to be afraid of life than death, 
this having in it less of evil and more of advantage. And 
it was a rare wish of that Roman, that death might come 
only to wise and excellent persons, and not to fools and 
cowards ; that it might not be a sanctuary for the timorous, 
but the reward of the virtuous : and indeed they only can 
make advantage of it. 

6. Make no excuses to make thy desires of life seem 
reasonable; neither cover thy fear with pretences, but 
suppress it rather with arts of severity and ingenuity. 
Some are not willing to submit to God’s sentence and 
arrest of death, till they have finished such a design, or 
made an end of the last paragraph of their book, or raised 
such portions for their children, or preached so many 
sermons, or built their house, or planted their orchard, or 
ordered their estate with such advantages. It is well for 
the modesty of these men, that the excuse is ready ; but if 
it were not, it is certain they would search one out: for an 
idle man is never ready to die, and is glad of any excuse ; 
and a busied man hath always something unfinished, and 
he is ready for every thing but death. And I remember 
that Petronius brings in Eumolpus composing verses in a 
desperate storm: and being called upon to shift for him¬ 
self when the ship dashed upon the rock, crying out, to let 
him alone, till he had trimmed and finished his verse, 
which was lame in the hinder leg: the man either had too 
strong a desire to end his verse, or too great a desire not 
to end his life. But we must know, God’s times are not 
to be measured by our circumstances; and what I value, 
God regards not: or if it be valuable in the accounts of 
men, yet God will supply it with other contingencies of 
his providence : and if Epaphroditus had died, when he 
had his great sickness St. Paul speaks of, God would have 
secured the work of the gospel without him ; and he could 
have spared Epaphroditus as well as St. Stephen, and St. 
Peter as well as St. James. Say no more ; but, when God 
calls, lay aside thy papers ; and first dress thy soul, and then 
dress thy hearse. ♦ 

Blindness is odious, and widowhood is sad, and desti¬ 
tution is without comfort, and persecution is full of trou 
ble, and famine is intolerable, and tears are the sad ease 
of a sadder heart: but these are evils of our life, not of 
i 2 2 m 2 


102 REMEDIES AGAINST FEAR OF DEATH. 

our death. For the dead that die in the Lord, are so fai 
from wanting the commodities of this life, that they do not 
want life itself. 

After all this, I do not say it is a sin to be afraid of 
death: we find the boldest spirit, that discourses of it with 
confidence, and dares undertake a danger as big as death, 
yet doth shrink at the horror of it, when it comes dressed in 
its proper circumstances. And Brutus, who was as bold a 
Roman to undertake a noble action as any was since they 
first reckoned by consuls, yet when Furius came to cut his 
throat, after his defeat by Anthony, he ran from it like a 
girl: and being admonished to die constantly, he swore by 
his life, that he would shortly endure death. But what do 
I speak of such imperfect persons ? Our blessed Lord was 
pleased to legitimate fear to us by his agony and prayers 
in the garden. It is not a sin to be afraid, but it is a great 
felicity to be without fear; which felicity our dearest 
Saviour refused to have, because it was agreeable to his 
purposes to suffer any thing, that was contrary to felicity, 
every thing but sin. 

But when men will by all means avoid death, they 
are like those, who at any hand resolve to be rich. The 
case may happen, in which they will blaspheme, and dis¬ 
honour Providence, or do a base action, or curse God and 
die : but, in all cases, they die miserable and insnared, 
and in no case do they die the less for it. Nature hath left 
us the key of the churchyard, and custom hath brought 
cemeteries and charnel-houses into cities and churches, 
places most frequented, that we might not carry ourselves 
strangely in so certain, so expected, so ordinary, so un¬ 
avoidable an accident. All reluctancy or unwillingness, to 
obey the Divine decree is but a snare to ourselves, and a 
load to our spirits, and is either an entire cause, or a great 
aggravation of the calamity. Who did not scorn to look 
upon Xerxes, when he caused three hundred stripes to be 
given to the sea, and sent a chartel of defiance against the 
mountain Athos? Who did not scorn the proud vanity of 
Cyrus, when he took so goodly a revenge upon the river 
Cydnus for his hard passage over it? or did not deride or 
pity the Thracians, for shooting arrows against heaven 
when it thunders ? To be angry with God, to quarrel with 
the Divine Providence, by repining against an unalterable, 
a natural, an easy sentence, is an argument of a huge 


GENERAL RULES LN SICKNESS. 


103 


folly, and the parent of a great trouble; a man is base and 
foolish to no purpose, he throws away a vice to his own 
misery, and to no advantages of ease and pleasure. • Fear 
keeps men in bondage all their life, saith St. Paul: and 
patience makes him his own man, and lord of his own in¬ 
terest and person. Therefore possess yourselves in patience 
with reason and religion, and you shall die with ease. 

If all the parts of this discourse be true, if they be better 
than dreams, and unless virtue be nothing but words, as a 
grove is a heap of trees; if they be not the fantasms of 
hypochondriacal persons, and designs upon the interest of 
men, and their persuasions to evil purposes; then there is 
no reason, but that we should really desire death, and ac¬ 
count it among the good things of God, and the sour and 
laborious felicities of man. St. Paul understood it well, 
when he desired to be dissolved ; he well enough knew his 
own advantages, and pursued them accordingly. But it 
is certain, that he, that is afraid of death, I mean, with a 
violent and transporting fear, with a fear apt to discom¬ 
pose his duty or his patience, that man either loves this 
world too much, or dares not trust God for the next. 

SECTION IX. 

General Rules and Exercises tvhereby our Sickness may 
become safe and sanctified, 

1. Take care that the cause of thy sickness be such, as 
may not sour it in the principal and original causes of it. 
It is a sad calamity to pass into the house of mourning 
through the gates of intemperance, by a drunken meeting 
or the surfeits of a loathed and luxurious table ; for then a 
man suffers the pain of his own folly, and he is like a fool 
smarting under the whip, which his own viciousness twisted 
for his back ; then a man pays the price of his sin, and hath 
a pure and an unmingled sorrow in his suffering; and it can¬ 
not be alleviated by any circumstances, for the whole affair 
is a mere process of death and sorrow. Sin is in the head, 
sickness is in the body, and death and an eternity of pains 
in the tail; and nothing can make this condition tolerable, 
unless the miracles of the Divine mercy will be pleased to 
exchange the eternal anger for the temporal. 1 rue it is, 
that, in all sufferings, the cause of it makes it noble or 
ignoble, honour or shame, tolerable or intolerable.* For 
* 1 Pet. ii. 19. Heb. xi. 36 Matt. v. 11 


GENERAL RULES TO MAKE 


104 

when patience is assaulted by a ruder violence, by a blow 
from heaven or earth, from a gracious God or an unjust 
man, patience looks forth to the doors which way she may 
escape. And if innocence or a cause of religion keep the 
first entrance, then, whether she escapes at the gates of 
life or death, there is a good to be received, greater than 
the evils of a sickness : but if sins thrust in that sickness, 
and that hell stands at the door, then patience turns into 
fury, and seeing it impossible to go forth with safety, rolls up 
and down with a circular and infinite revolution, makes its 
motion not from, but upon, its own centre; it doubles the 
pain, and increases the sorrow, till by its weight it breaks 
the spirit, and bursts into the agonies of infinite and eternal 
ages. If we had seen St. Polycarp burning to death, or 
St. Laurence roasted upon his gridiron, or St. Ignatius ex¬ 
posed to lions, or St. Sebastian pierced with arrows, or St. 
Attalus carried about the theatre with scorn unto his death 
for the cause of Jesus, for religion, for God and a holy 
conscience ; we should have been in love with flames, and 
have thought the gridiron fairer than the spondee , the ribs of 
a marital bed ; and we should have chosen to converse 
with those beasts, rather than those men that brought those 
beasts forth : and estimated the arrows to be the rays of 
light brighter than the moon ; and that disgrace and mis¬ 
taken pageantry were a solemnity richer and more magni¬ 
ficent than Mordecai’s procession upon the king’s horse, 
and in robes of majesty: for so did these holy men account 
them; they kissed their stakes, and hugged their deaths, 
and ran violently to torments, and counted whippings and 
secular disgraces to be the enamel of their persons, and the 
ointments of their heads, and the embalming their names, 
and securing them for immortality. But to see Sejanus 
torn in pieces by the people, or Nero crying or creeping 
timorously to his death, when he was condemned to die 
more majorum ; to see Judas pale and trembling, full of an¬ 
guish, sorrow, and despair; to observe the groanings and in¬ 
tolerable agonies of Herod and Antiochus, will tell and de¬ 
monstrate the causes of patience and impatience to proceed 
from the causes of the suffering: and it is sin only that 
makes the cup bitter and deadly. When men by vomit¬ 
ing, measure up the drink they took in, and, sick and sad, 
do again taste their meat turned into choler by intem¬ 
perance, the sin and its punishment are mingled so, that 


SICKNESS SAFE AND HOLY. 


105 


shame covers the face, and sorrow puts a veil of darkness 
upon the heart; and we scarce pity a vile person, that is 
haled to execution for murder or for treason, but we say 
he deserves it, and that every man is concerned in it that 
he should die. If lust brought the sickness or the shame, 
if we truly suffer the rewards of our evil deeds, we must 
thank ourselves; that is, we are fallen into an evil con¬ 
dition, and are the sacrifice of the Divine justice. But if we 
live holy lives, and if we enter well in, we are sure to pass 
on safe, and to go forth with advantage, if we list our¬ 
selves. 

2. To this relate, that we should not counterfeit sickness- 
for he that is to be careful of his passage into a sickness, 
will think himself concerned that he fall not into it through 
a trap-door; for so it hath sometimes happened, that such 
counterfeiting to light and evil purposes, hath ended in a 
real sufferance. Appian tells of a Roman gentleman, who, 
to escape the proscription of the triumvirate, fled, and, to 
secure his privacy, counterfeited himself blind of one eye, 
and wore a plaister upon it, till beginning to be free from the 
malice of the three prevailing princes, he opened his hood, 
but could not open his eye, but for ever lost the use of it, 
and with his eye paid for his liberty and hypocrisy. And 
Caelius counterfeited the gout, and all its circumstances 
and pains, its dressings and arts of remedy, and complaint, 
till at last the gout really entered and spoiled the pageantry. 
His arts of dissimulation were so witty, that they put life 
and motion into the very image of the disease : he hath 
made the very picture to sigh and groan. 

It is easy to tell upon the interest of what virtue such 
counterfeiting is to be proved. But it will be harder 
to snatch the politics of the world from following that, 
which they call a canonized and authentic precedent: and 
David’s counterfeiting himself mad before the king of 
Gath, to save his life and liberty, will be sufficient to 
entice men to serve an end upon the stock and charges of 
so small an irregularity, not in the matter of manners, but 
in the rules and decencies of natural or civil deportment. 
I cannot certainly tell what degrees of excuse David’s ac¬ 
tion might put on. This only : besides his present neces¬ 
sity, the laws, whose coercive or directive power David 
lived under, had less of severity, and more of liberty, and 
towards enemies had so little of restraint, and so great a 


106 


GENERAL RULES TO MAKE 


power, that what amongst them was a direct sin, if used to 
their brethren the sons of Jacob, was lawful and permitted 
to be acted against enemies. To which also I add this ge¬ 
neral caution, that the actions of holy persons in Scripture 
are not always good precedents to us Christians, who are to 
walk by a rule and a greater strictness, with more simpli¬ 
city and heartiness of pursuit. And amongst them, sane 
tity and holy living did, in very many of its instances, 
increase in new particulars of duty; and the prophets re¬ 
proved many things which the law forbade not; and taught 
many duties which Moses prescribed not: and as the time 
of Christ’s approach came, so the sermons and revelations 
too were more evangelical, and like the patterns, which 
were fully to be exhibited by the Son of God. Amongst 
which it is certain, that Christian simplicity and godly sin¬ 
cerity are to be accounted : and counterfeiting of sickness 
is a huge enemy to this: it is an upbraiding the Divine 
Providence, a jesting with fire, a playing with a thunder¬ 
bolt, a making the decrees of God to serve the vicious or 
secular ends of men; it is a tempting of a judgment, a 
false accusation of God, a forestalling and antedating his 
anger; it is a cozening of men by making God a party in 
the fraud : and, therefore, if the cozenage returns upon the 
man’s own head, he enters like a fox into his sickness, and 
perceives himself catched in a trap, or earthed in the in¬ 
tolerable dangers of the grave. 

3. Although we must be infinitely careful to prevent it, 
that sin does not thrust us into a sickness; yet, when we 
are in the house of sorrow, we should do well to take phy¬ 
sic against sin, and suppose that it is the cause of the evil; 
if not by way of natural causality and proper effect, yet by 
a moral influence, and by a just demerit. We can easily 
see when a man hath got a surfeit; intemperance is as 
plain as the hand-writing upon the wall, and easier to 
be read ; but covetousness may cause a fever as well as 
drunkenness: and pride can produce a falling-sickness as 
well as long washings and dilutions of the brain, and in¬ 
temperate lust: and we find it recorded in Scripture, that 
the contemptuous and unprepared manner of receiving of 
the holy sacraments caused sickness and death : and sa¬ 
crilege and vow-breach in Ananias and Sapphira made 
them to descend quick into their graves. Therefore, when 
sickness is upon us, let us cast about; and, if we can, let 


SICKNESS SAFE AND HOLY. 


101 


us find out the cause of God’s displeasure : that, it being 
removed, we may return into the health and securities 
of God’s loving kindness. Thus in the three years’ famine, 
David inquired of the Lord what was the matter; and God 
answered, “ It is for Saul and his bloody house and then 
David expiated the guilt, and the people were full again of 
food and blessing. And when Israel was smitten by the 
Amorites, Joshua cast about, and found out the accursed 
thing, and cast it out; and the people after that fought 
prosperously. And what God in that case said to Joshua 
he will also verify to us ; “ I will not be with you any more 
unless you destroy the accursed thing from among you.”* 
But in pursuance of this we are to observe, that although 
in case of loud and clamorous sins, the discovery is easy 
and the remedy not difficult; yet because Christianity is 
a nice thing, and religion is as pure as the sun, and the 
soul of man is apt to be troubled from more principles than 
the intricate and curiously-composed body in its innumer¬ 
able parts, it will often happen, that if we go to inquire in¬ 
to the particular, we shall never find it out; and we may 
suspect drunkenness, when it may be also a morose delec¬ 
tation in unclean thoughts, or covetousness, or oppression, 
or a crafty invasion of my neighbour’s rights, or my want 
of charity, or my judging unjustly in my own cause, or my 
censuring my neighbours, or a secret pride, or a base hy¬ 
pocrisy, or the pursuance of little ends with violence and 
passion, that may have procured the present messenger of 
death. Therefore ask no more after any one, but heartily 
endeavour to reform all; “ Sin no more, lest a worse thing 
happen for a single search or accusation may be the de¬ 
sign of an imperfect repentance ; but no man does heartily 
return to God but he that decrees against every irregula¬ 
rity ; and then only we can be restored to health or life, 
when we have taken away the causes of sickness and ac* 
cursed death. 

4. He that means to have his sickness turn into safety 
and life, into health and virtue, must make religion the em¬ 
ployment of his sickness, and prayer the employment of 
his religion. For there are certain compendiums or ab¬ 
breviatures and shortenings of religion, fitted to several 
states. They that first gave up their names to Christ, and 
that turned from Paganism to Christianity, had an abbre- 

* Josh. vii. 12. 


GENERAL RULES TO MAKE 


108 

viature fitted for them; they were to renounce their false 
worshippings, and give up the i belief, and vow their obe¬ 
dience unto Christ; and in the very profession of this they 
were forgiven in baptism. For God hastens to snatch them 
from the power of the devil, and therefore shortens the pas¬ 
sage, and secures the estate. In the case of poverty, God 
hath reduced this duty of man to an abbreviature of those 
few graces which they can exercise; such as are patience, 
contentedness, truth, and diligence ; and the rest he accepts 
in good will, and the charities of the soul, in prayers, and 
the actions of a cheap religion. And to most men charity 
is also an abbreviature. And as the love of God shortens 
the way to the purchase of all virtues: so the expression 
of this to the poor goes a huge way in the requisites and 
towards the consummation of an excellent religion. And 
martyrdom is another abbreviature; and so is every act of 
an excellent and heroical virtue. But when we are fallen 
into the state of sickness, and that our understanding is 
weak and troubled, our bodies sick and useless, our pas¬ 
sions turned into fear, and the whole state into suffering, 
God, in compliance with man’s infirmity, hath also turned 
our religion into such a duty, which a sick man can do 
most passionately, and a sad man and a timorous man per¬ 
form effectually, and a dying man can do to many purposes 
of pardon and mercy; and that is prayer. For although a 
sick man is bound to do many acts of virtue of several 
kinds, yet the most of them are to be done in the way of 
prayer. Prayer is not only the religion that is proper to a 
sick man’s condition, but it is the manner of doing other 
graces which is then left, and in his power. For thus the 
sick man is to do his repentance and his mortifications, his 
temperance and his chastity, by a fiction of imagination 
bringing the offers of the virtue to the spirit, and making 
an action or election : and so our prayers are a direct act of 
chastity, when they are made in the matter of that grace : 
just as repentance for our cruelty is an act of the grace of 
mercy ,* and repentance for uncleanness is an act of chas¬ 
tity, is a means of its nurchase, an act in order to the 
habit. And though such acts of virtue, which are only in 
the way of prayer, are ineffective to the entire purchase, 
and of themselves cannot change the vice into virtue ; yet 
they are good renewings of the grace, and proper exercise 
of a habit already gotten. 


SICKNESS SAFE AND HOLY. • 


109 

The purpose of this discourse is, to represent the excel¬ 
lency of prayer, and its proper advantages, which it hath 
in the time of sickness. For besides that it moves God to 
pity, piercing the clouds, and making the heavens, like a 
pricked eye, to weep over us, and refresh us with showers 
of pity : it also doth the work of the soul, and expresses 
the virtue of his whole life in effigy, in pictures and lively 
representments, so preparing it for a never-ceasing crown, 
by renewing the actions in the continuation of a never-ceas¬ 
ing, a never-hindered affection. Prayer speaks to God, 
when the tongue is stiffened with the approachings of death: 
prayer can dwell in the heart, and be signified by the hand 
or eye, by a thought or a groan : prayer, of all the actions 
of religion, is the last alive, and it serves God without cir¬ 
cumstances, and exercises material graces by abstraction 
from matter and separation, and makes them to be spirit¬ 
ual ; and therefore best dresses our bodies for funeral oi 
recovery, for the mercies of restitution or the mercies of 
the grave. 

5. In every sickness, whether it will, or will not be so 
in nature and in the event, yet in thy spirit and prepara¬ 
tions resolve upon it, and treat thyself accordingly, as if it 
were a sickness unto death. For many men support their 
unequal courages by flattery and false hopes; and because 
sicker men have recovered, believe that they shall do so : 
but therefore they neglect to adorn their souls, or set the 
house in order ; besides the temporal inconveniences that 
often happen by such persuasions, and putting off the evil 
day, such as are, dying intestate, leaving estates entangled, 
and some relatives unprovided for, they suffer infinitely 
in the interest and affairs of their soul; they die carelessly 
and surprised, their burdens on, and their scruples unre¬ 
moved, anc 1 their cases of conscience not determined, and 
like a sheep, without any care taken concerning their pre¬ 
cious souls. Some men will never believe that a villain 
will betray them, though they receive often advices from 
suspicious persons and likely accidents, till they are enter¬ 
ed into the snare : and then they believe it when they feel 
it, and when they cannot return ; but so the treason enter¬ 
ed, and the man was betrayed by his own folly, placing 
the snare in the regions and advantages of opportunity. 
This evil looks like boldness and a confident spirit, but it 
is the greatest timorousness and cowardice in the world 
k 2 N 


110 


GENERAL RULES TO MAKE 


They are so fearful to die, that they dare not look upon it 
as possible; and think that the making of a will is a mor¬ 
tal sign, and sending for a spiritual man an irrecoverable 
disease; and they are so afraid, lest they should think and 
believe now they must die, that they will not take care that 
it may not be evil, in case they should. So did the eastern 
slaves drink wine, and wrapped their heads in a veil, that 
they might die without sense or sorrow, and wink hard, 
that they might sleep the easier. In pursuance of this rule, 
let a man consider, that whatsoever must be done in sick¬ 
ness ought to be done in health; only let him observe, 
that his sickness, as a good monitor, chastises his neglect 
of duty, and forces him to live as he always should, and 
then all these solemnities and dressings for death are no¬ 
thing else but the part of a religious life, which he ought 
to have exercised all his days; and if those circumstances 
can affright him, let him please his fancy by this truth, that 
then he does but begin to live. But it will be a huge folly, 
if he shall think that confession of his sins will kill him; 
or receiving the holy sacrament will hasten his agony, oi 
the priest shall undo all the hopeful language and promises 
of his physician. Assure thyself, thou canst not die the 
sooner ; but, by such addresses, thou mayest die much the 
better. 

6. Let the sick person be infinitely careful, that he do 
not fall into a state of death upon a new account: that is, 
at no hand commit a deliberate sin, or retain any affection 
to the old, for in both cases; he falls into the evils of a 
surprise and the horrors of a sudden death is but a sudden 
joy, if it takes a man in the state and exercises of virtue : 
and it is only then an evil, when it finds a man unready. 
They were sad departures, when Tigilinus Cornelius Gal- 
lus, the Praetor; Lewis the son of Gonzaga, Duke of 
Mantua: Ladislaus, King of Naples ; Speusippus; Gia- 
chettus of Geneva; and one of the popes, died in the for¬ 
bidden embraces of abused women: or if Job had cursed 
God and so died: or when a man sits down in despair, 
and in the accusation and calumny of the Divine mercy; 
they make their night sad* and stormy, and eternal. When 
Ilerod began to stink with the shameful torment of his 
bowels, and felt the grave open under him, he imprisoned 
the nobles of his kingdom, and commanded his sister, that 
they should be a sacrifice to his departing ghost. This was 


SICKNESS SAFE AND HOLA. 


Ill 


an egress fit only for such persons, who meant to dwell 
with devils to eternal ages ; and that man is hugely in love 
with sin, who cannot forbear in the week of the assizes, and 
when himself stood at the bar of scrutiny, and prepared for 
his final never-to-be reversed sentence. He dies suddenly 
to the worse sense and event of sudden death, who so man¬ 
ages his sickness that even that state shall not be innocent, 
but that he is surprised in the guilt of a new account. It 
is a sign of a reprobate spirit, and an habitual, prevailing, 
ruling sin, which exacts obedience, when the judgment 
looks him in the face. At least go to God with the inno¬ 
cence and fair deportment of thy person in the last scene of 
thy life, that when thy soul breaks into the state of sepa¬ 
ration, it may carry the relishes of religion and sobriety to 
the places of its abode and sentence. 

7. When these things are taken care for, let the sick man 
so order his affairs, that he have but very little conversation 
with the world, but wholly (as he can) attend to religion, 
and antedate his conversation in heaven, always having in¬ 
tercourse with God and still conversing with the holy 
Jesus, kissing his wounds, admiring his goodness, begging 
his mercy, feeding on him with faith, and drinking his 
blood: to which purpose it were very fit (if all circum¬ 
stances be answerable) that the narrative of the passion of 
Christ be read or discoursed to him at length, or in brief, 
according to the style of the four gospels. But, in all 
things, let his care and society, be as little secular as is 
possible. 

CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACES PROPER TO THE STATE 

OF SICKNESS, WHICH A'SICK MAN MAY PRACTICE ALONE. 

SECTION L 

Of the Practice of Patience 

Now we suppose the man entering upon his scene of sor¬ 
rows, and passive graces. ' It may be, he went yesterday 
to a wedding, merry and brisk, and there he felt his sen¬ 
tence, that he must return home and die (for men very com¬ 
monly enter into the snare singing, and consider not whi¬ 
ther their fate leads them:) nor feared, that then the angel 
was to strike his stroke, till his knees kissed the earth 


]X2 THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE 

and his head trembled with the weight of the rod, which 
God put into the hand of an exterminating angel. But 
whatsoever the ingress was, when the man feels his blood 
boil, or his bones weary, or his flesh diseased with a load 
of a dispersed and disordered humour, or his head to ache, 
or his faculties discomposed, then he must consider, that 
all those discourses he hath heard, concerning patience and 
resignation, and conformity to Christ’s sufferings, and the 
melancholy lectures of the cross, must, all of them, now be 
reduced to practice, and pass from an ineffective contem¬ 
plation to such an exercise as will really try, whether 
we were true disciples of the cross, or only believed the 
doctrines of religion when we were at ease, and that they 
never passed through the ear to the heart, and dwelt not in 
our spirits. But every man should consider God does no¬ 
thing in vain; that he would not, to no purpose, send us 
preachers, and give us rules, and furnish us with discourse, 
and lend us books, and provide sermons, and make exam¬ 
ples, and promise his Spirit, and describe the blessedness 
of holy sufferings, and prepare us with daily alarms, if he 
did not really purpose to order our affairs, so that we should 
need all this, and use it all. There were no such thing as 
the grace of patience, if we were not to feel a sickness, or 
enter into a state of sufferings: whither, when we are en¬ 
tered, we are to practice by the following rules. 

The Practice and Acts of Patience , by way of Pule . 

1. At the first address and presence of sickness, stand 
still and arrest thy spirit, that it may, without amazement 
or affright, consider, that this was that thou lookedst for, 
and wprt always certain should happen ; and that now thou 
art to enter into the actions of a new religion, the agony 
of a strange constitution ; but at no hand suffer thy spirits 
to be dispersed with fear, or wildness of thought, but stay 
their looseness and dispersion by a serious consideration 
of the present and future employment. For so doth the 
Libyan lion, spying the fierce huntsman, he first beats 
himself with the strokes of his tail, and curls up his spirits, 
making them strong with union and recollection, till, being 
struck with a Mauritanian spear, he rushes forth into his 
defence and noblest contention; and either ’scapes into 
the secrets of his own dwelling, or else dies the bravest of 
the forest. Every man, when shot with an arrow from 


OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 


113 

God’s quiver, must then draw in all the auxiliaries of rea¬ 
son, and know, that then is the time to try his strength, 
and to reduce the words of his religion into action, and 
consider, that if he behaves himself weakly and timorously 
he suffers never the less of sickness; but if he returns to 
health, he carries along with him the mark of a coward 
and a fool; and if he descends into his grave, he enters 
into the state of the faithless and unbelievers. Let him 
set his heart firm upon this resolution; 44 1 must bear it in 
evitably, and I will, by God’s grace, do it nobly.” 

2. Bear in thy sickness all along the same thoughts, 
propositions, and discourses, concerning thy person, thy 
life and death, thy soul and religion, which thou hadst in 
the best days of thy health: and when thou didst discourse 
wisely concerning things spiritual. For it is to be sup¬ 
posed (and if it be not yet done, let this rule remind thee 
of it, and direct thee) that thou hast cast about in thy 
health and considered concerning thy change and the evil 
day, that thou must be sick and die, that thou must need 
a comforter, and that it was certain, thou shouldst fall into 
a state, in which all the cords of thy anchor should be 
stretched, and the very rock and foundation of faith should 
be attempted; and whatsoever fancies may disturb you, or 
whatsoever weaknesses may invade you, yet consider, 
when you were better able to judge and govern the acci¬ 
dents of your life, you concluded it necessary to trust in 
God, and possess your souls with patience. Think of 
things, as they think that stand by you, and as you did, 
when you stood by others; that it is a blessed thing to be 
patient; that a quietness of spirit hath a certain reward; 
that still there is infinite truth and reality in the promises 
of the gospel: that still thou art in the care of God, in the 
condition of a son, and working out thy salvation with 
labour and pain, with fear and trembling; that now the 
sun is under a cloud, but it still sends forth the same influ¬ 
ence ; and be sure to make no new principles upon the 
stock of a quick and impatient sense, or too busy an appre¬ 
hension ; keep your old principles, and, upon their stock, 
discourse and practise on towards your conclusion. 

3. Resolve to bear your sickness like a child, that is, 
without considering the evils and the pains, the sorrows 
and the danger; but go straight forward, and let thy 
thoughts cast about for nothing, but how to make advan- 

Jc 2 2 n 


ii4 


THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE 


tages of it by the instrument of religion. He that from a 
high tower looks down upon the precipice, and measures 
the space through which he must descend, and considers 
what a huge fall he shall have, shall feel more by the hor¬ 
ror of it, than by the last dash on the pavement: and he 
that tells his groans and numbers his sighs, and reckons 
one for every gripe of his belly cr throb of his distempered 
pulse, will make an artificial sickness greater than the na¬ 
tural. And if thou beest ashamed that a child should bear 
an evil better than thou, then take this instrument and 
allay thy spirit with it ; reflect not upon thy evil, but con¬ 
trive as much as you can for duty, and, in all the rest, in¬ 
consideration will ease your pain. 

4. If thou fearest thou shalt need, observe and draw to¬ 
gether all such things as are apt to charm thy spirit, and 
ease thy fancy in the sufferance. It is the counsel of So¬ 
crates : “ It is (said he) a great danger, and you must, by 
discourse and arts of reasoning, enchant it into slumber 
and some rest.” It may be, thou wert moved much to see 
a person of honour to die untimely; or thou didst love the 
religion of that death-bed, and it was dressed up in circum¬ 
stances fitted to thy needs, and hit thee on that part where 
thou wert most sensible: or some little saying in a sermon 
or passage of a book was chosen and singled out by a pe¬ 
culiar apprehension, and made consent lodge awhile in thy 
spirit, even then, when thou didst place death in thy 
meditation, and didst view it in all its dress of fancy. 
Whatsoever that was, which at any time did please thee 
in thy most passionate and fantastic part, let not that go, 
but bring it home at that time especially : because when 
thou art in thy weakness, such little things will easier move 
thee than a more severe discourse and a better reason- 
For a sick man is like a scrupulous: his case is gone be¬ 
yond the cure of arguments, and it is a trouble that can 
only be helped by chance, or a lucky saying; and Ludo¬ 
vico Corbinelli was moved at the death of Henry the 
Second, more than if he had read the saddest elegy of all 
the unfortunate princes in Christendom, or all the sad 
sayings of Scripture, or the threnes of the funeral pro¬ 
phets. I deny not but this course is most proper to weak 
persons; but it is a state of weakness, for which we are 
now providing remedies and instruction; a strong man will 
not need it; but when our sickness hath rendered us weak 


OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 


115 

in all senses, it is not good to refuse a remedy because it 
supposes us to be sick. But then, if to the catalogue of 
weak persons we add all those who are ruled by fancy, we 
shall find that many persons in their health, and more in 
their sickness, are under the dominion of fancy, and apt 
to be helped by those little things, which themselves have 
found fitted to their apprehension, and which no other man 
can minister to their needs, unless by chance, or in a heap 
of other things. But therefore every man should remember 
by what instruments he was at any time much moved, and 
try them upon his spirit in the day of his calamity. 

5. Do not choose the kind of thy sickness, or the man¬ 
ner of thy death ; but let it be what God please, so it be no 
greater than thy spirit or thy patience; and for that you 
are to rely upon the promise of God, and to secure thyself 
by prayer and industrybut in all things else let God be 
thy chooser, and let it be thy work to submit indifferently, 
and attend thy duty. It is lawful to beg of God that thy 
sickness may not be sharp or noisome, infectious or unusual, 
because these are circumstances of evil, which are also 
proper instruments of temptation; and though it may well 
concern the prudence of thy religion to fear thyself, and 
keep thee from violent temptations, who hast so often fallen 
in little ones: yet, even in these things, be sure to keep 
some degrees of indifferency ; that is, if God will not be 
entreated to ease thee, or to change thy trial, then be im¬ 
portunate that thy spirit and its interest be secured, and 
let him do what seemeth good in his eyes. But as, in the 
degrees of sickness, thou art to submit to God, so in the 
kind of it (supposing equal degrees) thou art to be alto¬ 
gether incurious, whether God call thee by a consumption or 
an asthma, by a dropsy or a palsy, by a fever in thy hu¬ 
mours, or a fever in thy spirits; because all such nicety of 
choice is nothing but a colour to a legitimate impatience, 
and to make an excuse to murmur privately, and for cir¬ 
cumstances, when in the sum of affairs we durst not own 
impatience. I have known some persons vehemently 
wish that they might die of a consumption; and some of 
these had a plot upon heaven, and hoped by that means 
to secure it after a careless life ; as thinking a linger¬ 
ing sickness would certainly infer a lingering and a 
protracted repentance; and, by that means, they thought 
they should be safest ; othe/s of them dreamed it would 


116 


THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE 


be an easier death; and have found themselves deceived, 
and their patience hath been tired with a weary spirit and 
a useless body, by often conversing with healthful persons 
and vigorous neighbours, by uneasiness of the flesh and 
the sharpness of their bones, ov want of spirits and a dying 
life : and, in conclusion, have been directly debauched by 
peevishness and a fretful sickness ; and these men had bet¬ 
ter have left it to the wisdom and goodness of God ; for they 
both are infinite. 

6. Be patient in the desires of religion ; and take care 
that the forwardness of exterior actions do not discompose 
thy spirit; while thou fearest, that by less serving God in 
thy disability, thou runnest backward in the accounts of 
pardon and the favour^, of God. Be content, that the time 
which was formerly spent in prayer, be now spent in vomit¬ 
ing, and carefulness, and attendances: since God hath 
pleased it should be so, it does not become us to think hard 
thoughts concerning it. Do not think that God is only to 
be found in a great prayer, or a solemn office: he is moved 
by a sigh, by a groan, by an act of love; and, therefore, 
when your pain is great and pungent, lay all your strength 
upon it, to bear it patiently : when the evil is something 
more tolerable, let your mind think some pious, though short, 
meditation : let it not be very busy, and full of attention ; 
for that will be but a new temptation to your patience, and 
render your religion tedious and hateful. But record your 
desires, and present yourself to God by general acts of will 
and understanding, and by habitual remembrances of your 
former vigorousness, and by verification of the same grace, 
rather than proper exercises. If you can do more, do it; 
but if you cannot, let it not become a scruple to thee. We 
must not think man is tied to the forms of health, or that 
he who swoons or faints, is obliged to his usual forms and 
hours of prayer: if we cannot labour, yet let us love 
Nothing can hinder us from that, but our own uncharit 
ableness. 

7. Be obedient to thy physician in those things tha 
concern him, if he be a person fit to minister unto thee 
God is he only that needs no help, and God hath create? 
the physician for thine ; therefore use him temperately 
without violent confidences ; and sweetly, without uncivil 
distrusting^ or refusing his prescription upon humours o; 
impotent fear. A man may refuse to have his arm or leg? 


OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 


117 

cut off, or to suffer the pains of Marius’s incision : and if 
he believes that to die is the less evil, he may compose 
himself to it, without hazarding his patience, or introduc¬ 
ing that which he thinks a worse evil; but that, which, in 
this article, is to be reproved and avoided, is, that some 
men will choose to die out of fear of death, and send for 
physicians, and do what themselves list, and call for 
counsel and follow none. When there is reason they 
should decline him, it is not to be accounted to the stock 
of a sin ; but where there is no just cause, there is a direct 
impatience. 

Hither is to be reduced, that we be not too confident of 
the physician, or drain our hopes of recovery from the 
fountain through so imperfect channels; laying the wells 
of God dry, and digging to ourselves broken cisterns. 
Physicians are the ministers of God’s mercies and provi¬ 
dence, in the matter of health and ease, of restitution or 
death; and when God shall enable their judgments, and 
direct their counsels, and prosper their medicines, they 
shall do thee good, for which you must give God thanks, 
and to the physician the honour of a blessed instrument. 
But this cannot always be done : and Lucius Cornelius, 
the lieutenant in Portugal under Fabius the consul, boasted 
in the inscription of his monument, that he had lived a 
healthful and vegete age till his last sickness, but then 
complained he was forsaken by his physician, and railed 
upon ^Esculapius, for not accepting his vow and passionate 
desire of preserving his life longer; and all the effect of 
that impatience and folly was, that it is recorded to follow¬ 
ing ages, that he died without reason and without religion. 
But it was a sad sight to see the favour of all France con¬ 
fined to a physician and a barber, and tfie king (Louis XL) 
to be so much their servant, that he should acknowledge 
and own his life from them, and all his ease to their gentle 
dressing of his gout and friendly ministries; for the king 
thought himself undone and robbed, if he should die; his 
portion here was fair; and he was loth to exchange his pos¬ 
session for the interest of a bigger hope. 

8. Treat thy nurses and servants sweetly, and as it be¬ 
comes an obliged and a necessitous person. Remember 
that thou art very troublesome to them ; that they trouble 
not thee willingly : that they strive to do thee ease and 
benefit, that they wish it, and sigh and pray for it, and are 


118 


THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE 


glad, if thou likest their attendance ; that whatsoever is 
amiss is thy disease, and the uneasiness of thy head or 
thy side, thy distemper or thy disaffections ; and it will be 
an unhandsome injustice to be troublesome to them, be¬ 
cause thou art so to thyself: to make them feel a part of 
thy sorrows, that thou mayest not bear them alone; evilly 
to requite their care by thy too curious and impatient 
wrangling and fretful spirit. That tenderness is vicious 
and unnatural, that shrieks out under the weight of a 
gentle cataplasm; and he will ill comply with God’s rod, 
that cannot endure his friend’s greatest kindness: and he 
will be very angry (if he durst) with God’s smiting him, 
that is peevish with his servants that go about to ease him. 

9. Let not the smart of your sickness make you to call 
violently for death ; you are not patient, unless you be 
content to live ; God hath wisely ordered that we may be 
the better reconciled with death, because it is the period 
of many calamities ; but wherever the general hath placed 
thee, stir not from thy station, until thou beest called off, 
but abide so, that death may come to thee by the design of 
him, who intends it to be thy advantage. God hath made 
sufferance to be thy work : and do not impatiently long 
for evening, lest 5j at night, thou findest the reward of him 
that was weary of his work; for he that is weary before 
his time is an unprofitable servant, and is either idle or 
diseased. 

10. That which remains in the practice of this grace is, 
that the sick man should do acts of patience by way of 
prayer and ejaculations; in which he may serve himself of 
the following collection. 

SECTION II. 

Acts of Patience by way of Prayer and Ejaculation. 

I will seek unto God, unto God t/ill I commit my cause, 
which doth great things and unsearchable, marvellous things 
without number. Job, v. 8, 9. 11. 19—26. 

To set up on high those that be low, that those which 
mourn, may be exalted to safety. 

So the poor have hope, and iniquity stoppeth her mouth. 

Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth ; there¬ 
fore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. 

For he maketh sore, and he bindeth up ; he woundeth, and 
his bands make whole. 


OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 


119 

He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there 
shall no evil touch thee. 

Thou shalt come to thy grave in a just age, like as a 
shock of corn cometh in his season. 

I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate upon thee 
in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, 
therefore under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. My 
soul followeth hard after thee ; for thy right hand hath up- 
holden me. Psal. lxiii. 6—8. 

God restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the path of 
righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no 
evil; for thou art with me : thy rod and thy staff, they com¬ 
fort me. Psal. xxiii. 3, 4. 

In the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion ; 
in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me, he shall 
set me upon a rock. Psal. xxvii. 5. 

The Lord hath looked down from the height of his sanc¬ 
tuary ; from the heaven did the Lord behold the earth : to 
hear the groaning of his prisoners; to loose those that are 
appointed to death. Psal. cii. 19, 20. 

I cried unto God with my voice, even unto God with my 
voice, and he gave ear unto me. In the day of my trouble 
I sought the Lord ; my sore ran in the night and ceased 
not; my soul refused to be comforted. I remembered God, 
and was troubled ; I complained, and my spirit was over¬ 
whelmed. Thou holdest mine eyes waking; I am so trou¬ 
bled that I cannot speak. Will the Lord cast me off for 
ever? and will he be favourable no more? Is his promise 
clean gone for ever ? Doth his promise fail for evermore ? 
Hath God fbrgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut 
up his tender mercies ? And I said, This is my infirmity : 
but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Mos* 
High. Psal. lxxvii. 1—4. 7—10. 

No temptation hath taken me, but such as is common to 
man : but God is faithful, who will not suffer me to be 
tempted above what I am able; but will, with the tempta¬ 
tion, also make a way to escape, that I may be able to bear 
it. 1 Cor. x. 13. 

Whatsoever things are written aforetime, were written 
for our learning; that we, through patience and comfort 
of the scriptures, might have hope. Now the God of 


THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE 


120 

peace and consolation grant me to be so minded. Rom. 
xv. 4, 5. 

It is the Lord ; let him do what seemeth good in his eyes. 

1 Sam. iii. 18. 

Surely the word that the Lord hath spoken is very good; 
but thy servant is weak : O remember mine infirmities ; 
and lift thy servant up, that leaneth upon thy right hand. 

There is given unto me a thorn in the flesh to buffet me. 
For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might de¬ 
part from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient 
for thee : for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 
Most gladly therefore wall I glory in my infirmities, that the 
power of Christ may rest upon me. For when I am weak, 
then am I strong. 2 Cor. xii. 7—10. 

O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou 
hast redeemed my life. And I said, My strength and my 
hope is in the Lord ; remembering my affliction and my 
misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them 
still in remembrance, and is humbled within me. This I 
recal to my mind, therefore I have hope. 

It is the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, be¬ 
cause his compassions fail not. They are new every morn¬ 
ing ; great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, said 
my soul ; therefore will I hope in him. 

The Lord is good to them that wait for him ; to the soul 
that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope 
and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. For the 
Lord will not cast off for ever. But though he cause grief, 
yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of 
his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly a nor grieve 
the children of men. Lam. iii. 58. 18—26. 31—33. 39. 

Wherefore doth a living man complain ? a man for tint 
punishment of his sins ? O that thou wouldst hide me in 
the grave, [of Jesus,] that thou wouldst keep me secret un¬ 
til the wrath be past: that thou wouldst appoint me a set 
time, and remember me ! Job, xiv. 13. 

Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we 
not receive evil? Job, ii. 20. 

The sick man may recite, or hear recited, the following 
Psalms in the intervals of his agony. 


OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS- 12J 

I. 

O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, neither cuasten me 
in thy hot displeasure. Psalm, vi. 

Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, 
heal me, for my bones are vexed. 

My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O Lord, how 
long ? 

D 

Return, O lord, deliver my soul: O save me for thy mer¬ 
cies’ sake. 

For in death no man remembereth thee; in the grave who 
shall give thee thanks? 

I am weary with my groaning ; all the night make I my 
bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears. 

Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old be¬ 
cause of all my [sorrows.] 

Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity, for the Lord 
hath heard the voice of my weeping. 

The Lord hath heard my supplication : the Lord will re¬ 
ceive my prayer. 

Blessed be the Lord, who hath heard my prayer, and 
hath not turned his mercy from me. 

II. 

In the Lord put I my trust; how say ye to my soul, Flee 
as a bird to your mountain? Psalm, xi. 

The Lord is in his holy temple ; the Lord’s throne is in 
heaven ; his eyes behold, his eyelids try the children of men. 

Preserve me, O God; for in thee do I put my trust. Psal. 

XVI. 1. 

O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my 
Lord; my goodness extendeth not to thee. 

The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my 
cup : thou maintainest my lot. 

I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel; my 
reins also instruct me in the night seasons. 

I have set the Lord always before me ; because he is at 
my right hand, I shall not be moved. 

Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth; my 
flesh also shall rest in hope. 

Thou wilt show me the path of life : in thy presence is 
the fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures foi 
evermore. 

As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness; I 

l 2 0 


122 THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE 

shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. Psalm 
xvii. 

III. 

Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble; mine 
eye is consumed with grief; yea, my soul and my belly. 
Psalm, xxxi. 

For my life is spent with grief; and my years with sigh¬ 
ing : my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my 
bones are consumed. 

I am like a broken vessel. 

But I trusted in thee, O Lord ; I said, Thou art my God. 

My times are in thy hand ; make thy face to shine upon 
thy servant; save me for thy mercy’s sake. 

When thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto 
thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Psalm, xxvii. 

Hide not thy face from me; put not thy servant away in 
thine anger; thou hast been my help; leave me not, nei¬ 
ther forsake me, O God of my salvation. 

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness 
of the Lord in the land of the living. 

O how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up 
for them that fear thee ; which thou hast wrought for 
them that trust in thee before the sons of men ! Psalm, 
xxxi. 

Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from 
the pride of man : thou shalt keep, them secretly in a pa¬ 
vilion from the strife of tongues, [ from the calumnies and 
aggravation of sins hy devils .] 

I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes; 
nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplication 
when I cried unto thee. 

O love the Lord, all ye his saints ; for the Lord preserveth 
the faithful, and plenteously rewardeth the proud doer. 

Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, 
all ye that hope in the Lord. 

The prayer to he said in the beginning of a Sickness. 

O Almighty God, merciful and gracious, who, in thy jus¬ 
tice, didst send sorrow and tears, sickness and death, into 
the world, as a punishment for man’s sins, and hast com¬ 
prehended all under sin, and this sad covenant of suffer¬ 
ings, not to destroy us, but that thou mightest have mercy 


OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS 


123 

upon all, making thy justice to minister to mercy, short af¬ 
flictions to an eternal weight of glory; as thou hast turned 
my sins into sickness, so turn my sickness to the advantages 
of holiness and religion, of mercy and pardon, of faith and 
hope, of grace and glory. Thou hast now called me to the 
fellowship of sufferings ; Lord, by the instrument of religion 
let my present condition be so sanctified, that my sufferings 
may be united to the sufferings of my Lord, that so thou may- 
est pity me and assist me. Relieve my sorrow, and support 
my spirit; direct my thoughts, and sanctify the accidents of 
my sickness, and that the punishment of my sin may be the 
school of virtue ; in which, since thou hast now entered me, 
Lord, make me a holy proficient; that I may behave myself 
as a son under discipline, humbly and obediently, evenly 
and penitently, that I may come by this means nearer unto 
thee; that if I shall go forth of this sickness by the gate 
of life and health, I may return to the world with great 
strengths of spirit, to run a new race of a stricter holiness 
and a more severe religion ; or if I pass from hence with 
the outlet of death, I may enter into the bosom of my Lord, 
and may feel the present joys of a certain hope of that sea 
of pleasures, in which all thy saints and servants shall be 
comprehended to eternal ages. Grant this for Jesus Christ’s 
sake, our dearest Lord and Saviour. Amen. 

An Act of Resignation to be said by a sick Person in all the 
Accidents of his Sickness. 

O eternal God, thou hast made me and sustained me ; thou 
hast blessed mr : n all the days of my life, and hast taken 
care of me in ail' variety of accidents ; and nothing happens 
to me in vain, nothing without thy providence ; and I know 
thou smitest thy servants in mercy, and with designs of the 
greatest pity in the world: Lord, I humbly lie down under 
thy rod; do with me as thou pleasest; do thou choose for 
me, not only the whole state and condition of being, but 
every little and great accident of it. Keep me safe by thy 
grace, and then use what instrument thou pleasest, of 
bringing me to thee. Lord, I am not solicitous of the pas¬ 
sage, so I may get to thee. Only, O Lord, remember my 
infirmities, and let thy servant rejoice in thee always, and 
feel and confess, and glory in thy goodness. O be thou 
as delightful to me in this my medicinal sickn-ess, as ever 
thou wert in any of the dangers of my prosperity ; let me 


124 


THE PRACTICE OF THE GRACE 


not peevishly refuse thy pardon at the rate of a severe 
discipline. 1 am thy servant and thy creature, thy pur¬ 
chased possession, and thy son ; I am all thine; and because 
thou hast mercy in store for all that trust in thee, I cover 
mine eyes, and in silence wait for the time of my redemp¬ 
tion. Amen. 

A Prayer for the Grace of Patience . 

Most merciful and gracious Father, who in the redemp¬ 
tion of lost mankind by the passion of thy most holy Son, 
hast established a covenant of sufferings, I bless and mag¬ 
nify thy name, that thou hast adopted me into the inherit¬ 
ance of sons, and hast given me a portion of my elder bro¬ 
ther. Lord, the cross falls heavy, and sits uneasy upon my 
shoulders: my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak; I 
humbly beg of thee, that I may now rejoice in this thy dis¬ 
pensation and effect of providence. I know and am per¬ 
suaded, that thou art then as gracious, when thou smitest 
us for amendment or trial, as when thou relievest our wea¬ 
ried bodies, in compliance with our infirmity. I rejoice, 
O Lord, in thy rare and mysterious mercy, who, by suffer¬ 
ings, hast turned our misery into advantages unspeakable ; 
for so thou makest us like to thy Son, and givest us a gift, 
that the angels never did receive : for they cannot die in 
conformity to, and imitation of their Lord and ours; but, 
blessed be thy name, we can ; and, dearest Lord, let it be 
so. Amen. 

II. 

Thou, who art the God of patience and consolation, 
strengthen me in the inner man, that I may bear the yoke 
and burden of the Lord without any uneasy and useless 
murmurs and ineffective unwillingness. Lord, I am un¬ 
able to stand under the cross, unable of myself; but thou, 
O holy Jesus, who didst feel the burden of it, who didst 
sink under it, and wert pleased to admit a man to bear 
part of the load, when thou underwentest all for him, be 
thou pleased to ease this load by fortifying my spirit, that 
I may be strongest when I am weakest, and may be able 
to do and suffer every thing thou pleasest, through Christ, 
who strengthens me. Lord, if thou wilt support me, I will 
for ever praise thee; if thou wilt suffer the load to press 
me yet more heavily, I will cry unto thee, and complain 
unto my God; and at last I will lie down and die, and by 


OF PATIENCE IN SICKNESS. 


125 

the mercies and intercession of the holy Jesus, and the 
conduct of thy blessed Spirit, and the ministry of angels, 
pass into those mansions where holy souls rest, and weep 
no more. Lord, pity me ; Lord, sanctify this my sickness ; 
Lord, strengthen me ; holy Jesus, save me, and deliver me. 
Thou knowest how shamefully I have fallen with pleasure, 
in thy mercy and very pity, let me not fall with pain too. 
O let me never charge God foolishly, nor offend thee by my 
impatience and uneasy spirit, nor weaken the hands and 
hearts of those, that charitably minister to my needs ; but 
let me pass through the valley of tears and the valley of 
the shadow of death with safety and peace, with a meek 
spirit and a sense of the Divine mercies: and though thou 
breakest me in pieces, my hope is, thou wilt gather me up 
in the gatherings of eternity. Grant this eternal God, gra¬ 
cious Father, for the merits and intercession of our merci¬ 
ful high-priest, who once suffered for me, and for ever inter¬ 
cedes for me, our most gracious and ever-blessed Saviour 
Jesus. 

A Prayer , to be said when the sick Man takes Physic. 

O most blessed and eternal Jesus, thou, who art the great 
physician of our souls, and the Sun of Righteousness aris¬ 
ing with healing in thy wings, to thee is given by thy hea¬ 
venly Father the government of all the world, and thou dis- 
posest every great and little accident to thy Father’s honour, 
and to the good and comfort of them that love and serve 
thee ; be pleased to bless the ministry of thy servant in or¬ 
der to my ease and health ; direct his judgment, prosper the 
medicines, and dispose the chances of my sickness fortu¬ 
nately, that I may feel the blessing and loving-kindness of 
the Lord in the ease of my pain and the restitution of my 
health; that I, being restored to the society of the living, 
and to thy solemn assemblies, may praise thee and thy good¬ 
ness, secretly among the faithful, and in the congregation 
of thy redeemed ones, here in the outer-courts of the Lord, 
and hereafter in thy eternal temple for ever and ever. 
Amen. 

SECTION III. # 

Of the Practice of the Grace of Faith in the 
time of Sickness . 

Now is the time, in which faith appears most necessary, 
and most difficult. It is the foundation of a good life, and 
12 2 o 2 


THE PRACTICE OF FAITH 


126 

the foundation of all our hopes ; it is that, without which 
we cannot live well, and without which we cannot die well: 
it is a grace that then we shall need to support our spirits, 
to sustain our hopes, to alleviate our sickness, to resist 
temptation, to prevent despair. Upon the belief of the arti¬ 
cles of our religion, we can do the works of a holy life ; but 
upon belief of the promises, we can bear our sickness pa¬ 
tiently, and die cheerfully. The sick man may practice it 
in the following instances. 

1. Let the sick man be careful, that he do not admit of 
any doubt concerning that which he believed and received 
from common consent, in his best health and days of elec 
tion and religion. For if the devil can but prevail so far 
as to unfix and unrivet the resolution and confidence or 
fulness of assent, it is easy for him so to unwind the spirit, 
that from why to whether or no , from whether or no to 
scarcely not , from scarcely not to absolutely not at all , are 
steps of a descending and falling spirit: and whatsoever a 
man is made to doubt of by the weakness of his under¬ 
standing in a sickness, it will be hard to get an instrument 
strong or subtle enough to reinforce and insure; for-when 
the strengths are gone, by which faith held, and it does not 
stand firm by the weight of its own bulk and great consti¬ 
tution, nor yet by the cordage of a tenacious root; then it 
is prepared for a ruin, which it cannot escape in the tem¬ 
pests of sickness and the assaults of a devil. Discourse 
and argument, the line of tradition, and a never-failing ex¬ 
perience, the Spirit of God, and the truth of miracles, the 
word of prophecy, and the blood of martyrs, the excel¬ 
lency of the doctrine, and the necessity of men, the riches 
of the promises, and the wisdom of the revelations, the 
reasonableness and sublimity, the concordance and the 
usefulness, of the articles, and their compliance with all 
the needs of man, and the government of commonwealths, 
are like the strings and branches of the roots, by which 
faith stands firm and unmoveable in the spirit and under¬ 
standing of a man. But in sickness, the understanding 
is shaken, and the ground is removed in which the root 
did grapple, and support its trunk; and therefore there is 
no way now, but that it be left to stand upon the old confi¬ 
dences, and by the firmament of its own weight: it must 
be left to stand, because it always stood there before : and as 
it stood all his lifetime in the ground of understanding, so 


IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


127 

it must now be supported with will, and a fixed resolution. 
But disputation tempts it, and shakes it with trying, and 
overthrows it with shaking. Above all things in the world, 
let the sick man fear a proposition, which his sickness hath 
put into him contrary to the discourses of health and a sober 
untroubled reason. 

2. Let the sick man mingle the recital of his creed to¬ 
gether with his devotions, and in that let him account his 
faith ; not in curiosity and factions, in the confessions of 
parties and interests; for some over-forward zeals are so 
earnest to profess their little and uncertain articles, and 
glory so to die in a particular and divided communion, that, 
in the profession of their faith, they lose or discompose their 
charity. Let it be enough, that we secure our interest of 
heaven, though we do not go about to appropriate the man¬ 
sions to our sect: for every good man hopes to be saved, 
as he is a Christian, and not as he is a Lutheran, or of ano¬ 
ther division. However, those articles, upon which he 
can build the exercise of any virtue in his sickness, or 
upon the stock of which he can improve his present con¬ 
dition,are such as consist in the greatness and goodness, 
the veracity and mercy of God through Jesus Christ; 
nothing of which can be concerned in the fond disputa¬ 
tions, which faction and interest hath too long maintained 
in Christendom. 

3. Let the sick man’s faith especially be active about 
the promises of grace, and the excellent things of the 
gospel: those, which can comfort his sorrows, and enable 
his patience : those, upon the hopes of which he did the 
duties of his life, and for which he is not unwilling to die ; 
such as the intercession and advocation of Christ, remis¬ 
sion of sins, the resurrection, the mysterious arts and mer¬ 
cies of man’s redemption, Christ’s triumph over death and 
all the powers cf hell, the covenant of grace, or the blessed 
issues of repentance ; and, above all, the article of eternal 
life, upon the strength of which, eleven thousand virgins 
went cheerfully together to their martyrdom, and twenty 
thousand Christians were burned by Dioclesian on a 
Christmas day, and whole armies of Asian Christians offer¬ 
ed themselves to the tribunals of Arius Antonius, and 
whole colleges of severe persons were instituted, who lived 
upon religion, whose dinner was the eucharist, whose supper 
was praise, and their nights were watches, and their days 


128 


THE PRACTICE OF FAITH 


were labour; for the hope of which, then, men counted it 
gain to lose their estates, and gloried in their sufferings, 
and rejoiced in their persecutions, and were glad at their 
disgraces. This is the article, that hath made all the mar¬ 
tyrs of Christ confident and glorious; and if it does not 
more than sufficiently strengthen our spirits to the present 
suffering, it is because we understand it not, but have the 
appetites of beasts and fools. But if the sick man fixes 
his thoughts, and lets his habitation to dwell here, he 
swells his hope, and masters his fears, and eases his sorrows, 
and overcomes his temptations. 

4. Let the sick man endeavour to turn his faith of the 
articles into the love of them: and that will be an excel¬ 
lent instrument, not only to refresh his sorrows, but to con¬ 
firm his faith in defiance of all temptations. Fora sick man 
and a disturbed understanding are not competent and fit in¬ 
struments to judge concerning the reasonableness of a pro¬ 
position. But therefore let him consider and love it, be¬ 
cause it is useful and necessary, profitable and gracious; 
and when he is once in love with it, and then also renews 
his love to it, when he feels the need of it, he is an inter¬ 
ested person, and for his own sake will never let it go, and 
pass into the shadows of doubting, or the utter darkness of 
infidelity. An act of love will make him have a mind to it; 
and we easily believe what we love, but very uneasily part 
with our belief, which we for so great an interest have cho¬ 
sen, and entertained with a great affection. 

5. Let the sick person be infinitely careful, that his faith 
be not tempted by any man, or any thing; and when it is in 
any degree weakened, let him lay fast hold upon the con¬ 
clusion, upon the article itself, and by earnest prayer beg 
of God to guide him in certainty and safety. For let him 
consider, that the article is better than all its contrary or 
contradictory, and he is concerned, that it be true, and 
concerned also, that he do believe it; but he can receive 
no good at all, if Christ did not die, if there be no resur¬ 
rection, if his creed hath deceived him; therefore all that 
he is to do, is to secure his hold, which he can do no way 
but by prayer and by his interest. And by this argument 
or instrument it was, that Socrates refreshed the evil of 
his condition, when he was to drink his aconite. “ If the 
soul be immortal, and perpetual rewards be laid up for wise 
souls, then I lose nothing by my death; but if there be 


IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


129 

not, then I lose nothing by my opinion ; for it supports my 
spirit in my passage, and the evil of being deceived cannot 
overtake me when I have no being.” So it is with all that 
are tempted in their faith. If those articles be not true, 
then the men are nothing; if they be true, then they are 
happy : and if the articles fail, there can be no punishment 
for believing: but if they be true, my not believing de¬ 
stroys all my portion in them, and possibility to receive the 
excellent things which they contain. By faith we quench 
the fiery darts of the devil: but if our faith be quenched, 
wherewithal shall we be able to endure the assault ? 
Therefore seize upon the article, and secure the great ob¬ 
ject, and the great instrument, that is, the hopes of pardon 
and eternal life through Jesus Christ; and do this by all 
means, and by any instrument, artificial or inartificial, by 
argument or by stratagem, by perfect resolution or by dis¬ 
course, by the hand and ears of premises or the foot of 
the conclusion, by right or by wrong, because we under¬ 
stand it, or because we love it, super totam materiam; be¬ 
cause I will, and because I ought; because it is safe to do 
so, and because it is not safe to do otherwise; because if I 
do, I may receive a good ; and because if I do not, 1 am 
miserable; either for that I shall have a portion of sorrows, 
or that I can have no portion of good things without it. 

SECTION IV. 

Acts of Faith , by way of Prayer and Ejaculation , to be said 
by sick Men , in the days of their Temptation. 

Lord, whither shall I go? thou hast the words of eternal 
life. John vi. 68. 

I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus 
Christ, his only Son, our Lord, &c. 

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, &c. 

Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief. Mark ix. 24. 

I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that none 
of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself; for 
whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we 
die, we die unto the Lord : whether we live therefore or die, 
we are the Lord’s. Rom. xiv. 14. 7, 8. 

If God be for us, who can be against us ? Rom. viii 
31—34. 


THE PRACTICE OF FAITH 


130 

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up 
for us all, how shall he not with him give us all things? 

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? 
It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It 
is Christ that died; yea, rather that is risen again, who is 
even at the right hand of God; who also maketh interces¬ 
sion for us. 

If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, 
Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for 
our sins. 1 John ii. 1, 2. 

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. 
1 Tim. i. 15. 

O grant that I may obtain mercy, that in me Jesus Christ 
may show forth all long-suffering, that I may believe in him 
to life everlasting. 

I am bound to give thanks unto God alway, because God 
hath from the beginning chosen me to salvation, through 
sanctification of the spirit, and belief of the truth, where- 
unto he called me by the Gospel, to the obtaining of the 
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. 2Thess. ii. 13, 14. 16, 17. 

Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God even our 
Father which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting 
consolation, and good hope through grace, comfort my heart, 
and establish me in every good word and work. 

The Lord direct my heart into the love of God, and into 
the patient waiting for Christ. 2 Thess. iii. 5. 

O that our God would count me worthy of this calling, 
and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work 
of fa’th with power ; that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ 
ma % y je glorified in me, and I in him, according to the grace 
of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thess. i. 11, 12. 

Let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the 
breast-plate of faith and love, and for an helmet the hope 
of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but 
to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for 
us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together 
with him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify 
one another. 1 Thess. v. 8—10. 12. 

There is no name under heaven, whereby we can be saved, 
but only the name of the Lord Jesus. Acts iv. 12. And 
every soul which wid not hear that prophet, shall be destroy¬ 
ed from among the people. Acts iii. 23. 


IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


16 \ 

God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Jesus 
Christ. Gal. vi. 14. I desire to know nothing but Jesus 
Christ and him crucified. 1 Cor. ii. 2. For to me to live is 
Christ, and to die is gain. Phil. i. 21. 

Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils ; for 
wherein is he to be accounted of? Isa. ii. 22. But the just 
shall live by faith. Hab. ii. 4. 

Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the son of God, 
John xi. 27. the Saviour of the world, John iv. 42, the re¬ 
surrection and the life ; and he that believeth in thee, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live. John xi. 25. 40. 

Jesus said unto her, Said I not to thee, that if thou 
wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God ? 

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy vic¬ 
tory ? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin i* 
the law. But thanks be to God who giveth us victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, make me steadfast 
and unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the 
Lord : for I know that my labour is not in vain in the Lr rtf. 
1 Cor. xv. 55—58. 

The Prayer for the Grace and Strengths of Faith. 

O holy and eternal Jesus, who didst die for me and for 
all mankind, abolishing our sin, reconciling us to God, 
adopting us into the portion of thine heritage, and establish¬ 
ing with us a covenant of faith and obedience, making our 
souls to rely upon spiritual strengths, by the supports of a 
holy belief, and the expectation of rare promises, and the 
infallible truths of God ; O let me for ever dwel 1 upon the 
rock, leaning upon thy arm, believing thy word trusting in 
chy promises, waiting for thy mercies, and doing thy com¬ 
mandments ; that the devil may not prevail upon me, and 
my own weaknesses may not abuse or unsettle my persua¬ 
sions, nor my sins discompose my just confidence in thee 
and thy eternal mercies. Let roe always be thy servant 
and thy disciple, and die in tho communion of thy church, 
^>f all faithful people. Lord, I renounce whatsoever is 
against thy truth: and if secretly I have, or do believe, 
any false proposition, i do ; t in the simplicity of my heart 
and great weakness; and if I could discover it, would 
dash it in pieces D v a solemn disclaiming it; for thou 
art the way, the truth, and the life. And I know, that 
whatsoever thou hast declared, that is the truth of God: 


132 PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE 

and I do firmly adhere to the religion thou hast taught, and 
glory in nothing so much as that I am a Christian, that 
thy name is called upon me. O my God, though I die, 
yet will I put my trust in thee. In thee, O Lord, have I 
trusted ; let me never be confounded. Amen. 

SECTION V. 

Of the Practice of the Grace of Repentance in the 
time of Sickness. 

Men generally do very much dread sudden death, and 
pray against it passionately ; and certainly it hath in it 
great inconveniences accidentally to men’s estates, to the 
settlement of families, to the culture and trimming of souls, 
and it robs the man of the blessings which may be conse¬ 
quent to sickness, and to the passive graces and holy con¬ 
tentions of a Christian, while he descends to his grave with¬ 
out an adversary or a trial; and a good man may be taken 
at such a disadvantage, that a sudden death would be a 
great evil, even to the most excellent person, if it strikes 
him in an unlucky circumstance. But these considerations 
are not the only ingredients in those men’s discourse, who 
pray violently against sudden deaths ; for possibly, if this 
were all, there may be in the condition of sudden death 
something to make recompense for the evils of the over- 
hasty accident. For certainly, it is less temporal evil to 
fall by the rudeness of a sword, than the violences of a 
fever, and the axe is much a less affliction than a strangury ; 
and though a sickness tries our virtues, yet a sudden death 
is free from temptation ; a sickness may be more glorious, 
and a sudden death more safe. The deadest deaths are best, 
the shortest and least premeditate, so Caesar said ; and 
Pliny called a short death the greatest fortune of a man’s 
life. For even good men have been forced to an indecency 
of deportment by the violences of pain: and Cicero ob¬ 
serves concerning Hercules, that he Avas broken in pieces 
Avith pain even then, when he sought for immortality by his 
death, being tortured with a plague, knit up in the lappejt 
of his shirt. And therefore as a sudden death certainly 
loses the rewards of a holy sickness, so it makes, that a man 
shall not so much hazard and lose the rewards of a holy 
life. 

But the secret of this affair is a Avorse matter: men live 
at that rate, either of an habitual Avickedness, or else a fre 


IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


133 


quent repetition of single acts of killing and deadly sins, 
that a sudden death is the ruin of all their hopes, and a per¬ 
fect consignation to an eternal sorrow. But in this case also 
is a lingering sickness: for our sickness may change us 
from life to health, from health to strength, from strength 
to the firmness and confirmation of habitual graces; but 
it cannot change a man from death to life, and begin and 
finish that process, which sits not down but in the bosom 
of blessedness. He that washes in the morning, when his 
bath is seasonable and healthful, is not only made clean, 
but sprightly, and the blood is brisk and coloured like the 
first springing of the morning; but they that wash their 
dead, cleanse the skin, and leave paleness upon the cheek, 
and stiffness in all the joints. A repentance upon our 
death-bed is like washing the corpse: it is cleanly and 
civil; but makes no change deeper than the skin. But 
God knows, it is a custom so to wash them, that are going 
to dwell with dust, and to be buried in the lap of their 
kindred earth, but all their life time wallow in pollutions 
without any washing at all; or if they do, it is like that of 
the Dardani, who washed but thrice all their lifetime, when 
they are born, and when they marry, and when they die; 
when they are baptized, or against a solemnity, or for the 
day of their funeral : but these are but ceremonious wash¬ 
ings, and never purify the soul, if it be stained and hath 
sullied the whiteness of its baptismal robes. 

God intended we should live a holy life: he contracted 
with us in Jesus Christ for a holy life; he made no abate¬ 
ments of the strictest sense of it, but such as did neces¬ 
sarily comply with human infirmities or possibilities; that is, 
he understood it in the sense of repentance, which still is so 
to renew our duty, that it may be a holy life in the second 
sense; that is, some great portion of our life to be spent in 
living as Christians should. A resolving to repent upon 
our death-bed, is the greatest mockery of God in the world, 
and the most perfect contradictory to all his excellent de¬ 
signs of mercy and holiness: for therefore he threatened 
us with hell, if we did not, and he promised heaven, if we 
did live a holy life: and a late repentance promises heaven tc. 
us upon other conditions, even when we have lived wickedly 
It renders a man useless and intolerable to the world 
taking off the great curb of religion, of fear and hope, an<* 
permitting all impiety with the greatest impunity and en 

m 2 P 


134 


THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE 


couragement in the world. By this means we see so many 
uratSxg 5ro\u%^ov«ouj, aS Philo calls them, or, as the prophet, 
pueros centum annorum , children of almost a hundred 
years old, upon whose grave we may write the inscription 
which was upon the tomb of Simiiis in Xiphilin. “ Here 
he lies, who was so many years, but lived but seven. And 
the course of nature runs counter to the perfect design of 
piety : and God, who gave us a life to live to him, is only 
served at our death, when we die to all the world : and we 
undervalue the great promises made by the holy Jesus, for 
which the piety, the strictest unerring piety, of ten thousand 
ages is not a proportionable exchange : yet we think it a 
hard bargain to get heaven, if we be forced to part with one 
lust, or to live soberly twenty years; but, like Demetrius 
Afer (who, having lived a slave all his life-time, yet desir¬ 
ing to descend to his grave in freedom, begged manumis¬ 
sion of his Lord,) we lived in the bondage of our sin all 
our days, and hope to die the Lord’s freed-men. But above 
all, this course of a delayed repentance must of necessity 
therefore be ineffective and certainly mortal, because it is 
an entire destruction of the very formality and essential 
constituent reason of religion : which I thus demonstrate. 

When God made man, and propounded to him an im¬ 
mortal and a blessed state, as the end of his hopes and the 
perfection of his condition, he did not give it him for 
nothing, but upon certain'conditions : which, although they 
could add nothing to God, yet they were such things, 
which man could value, and they were his best: and God 
had made appetites of pleasure in man, that in them the 
scene of his obedience should lie. For when God made 
instances of man’s obedience, he, 1. either commanded 
such things to be done, which man did naturally desire 
or, 2. such things which contradict his natural desires; or, 
3. such which were indifferent. Not the first and the last: 
for it could be no effect of love or duty towards God, for a 
man to eat, when he was impatiently hungry, and could 
not stay from eating; neither was it any contention of 
obedience or labour of love for a man to look eastward once 
a day, or turn his back when the north wind blew fierce 
and loud. Therefore for the trial and instance of obedience, 
God made his laws so, that they should lay restraint upon 
man’s appetites, so that man might part with something 
of his own, that he may give to God his will, and deny 


IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


135 

jt to himself for the interest of his service; and chastity 
is the denial of a violent desire ; and justice is parting with 
money that might help to enrich me ; and meekness is a 
huge contradiction to pride and revenge; and the wander¬ 
ing of our eyes, and the greatness of our fancy, and our 
imaginative opinions, are to be lessened, that we may serve 
God. There is no other way of serving God, we have no¬ 
thing else to present unto him: we do not else give him 
any thing or part of ourselves, but when we, for his sake, 
part with what we naturally desire; and difficulty is essen¬ 
tial to virtue, and without choice there can be no reward, 
and in the satisfaction of our natural desires there is no 
election; we run to them, as beasts to the river or the 
crib. If, therefore, any man shall teach or practise such 
a religion, that satisfies all our natural desires in the days 
of desire and passion, of lust and appetites, and only turns 
to God when his appetites are gone, and his desires cease ; 
this man hath overthrown the very being of virtues, and 
the essential constitution of religion; religion is no reli¬ 
gion, and virtue is no act of choice, and reward comes by 
chance and without condition, if we only are religious when 
we cannot choose; if we part with our money, when we can¬ 
not keep it; with our lust when we cannot act it; with 
our desires when they have left us. Death is a certain mor- 
tifier; but that mortification is deadly, not useful to the pur¬ 
poses of a spiritual life. When we are compelled to depart 
from our evil customs, and leave to live, that we may begin 
to live, then we die to die ; that life is the prologue to death, 
and thenceforth we die eternally. 

St. Cyril speaks of certain people, that chose to wor¬ 
ship the sun, because he was a day-god : for believing that 
he was quenched every night in the sea, or that he had no 
influence upon them that light up candles, and lived by 
the light of fire, they were confident they might be Athe¬ 
ists all night, and live as they list. Men who divide their 
little portion of time between religion and pleasures, be¬ 
tween God and God’s enemy, think, that God is to rule 
but in his certain period of time, and that our life is the 
stage for passion and folly, and the day of death for the 
work of our life. But as to God both the day and night 
are alike, so are the first and last of our days: all are his 
due, and he will account severely with us for the follies of 
the first and the evil of the last. The evils and the pains 


136 


THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE 


are great, which are reserved for those who defer their res¬ 
titution to God’s favour till their death. And therefore 
Antistbenes said well, “It is not the happy death, but the 
happy life, that makes man happy.” It is in piety, as in 
fame and reputation ; he secures a good name but loosely, 
that trusts his fame and celebrity only to his ashes; and 
it is more a civility than the basis of a firm reputation, that 
men speak honour of their departed relatives; but if their 
life be virtuous, it forces honour from contempt, and 
snatches it from the hand of envy, and it shines through 
the crevices of detraction : and as it anointed the head of 
the living, so it embalms the body of the dead. From 
these premises it follows, that when we discourse of a sick 
man’s repentance, it is intended to be, not a beginning, 
but the prosecution and consummation of the covenant of 
repentance, which Christ stipulated with us in baptism, 
and which we needed all our life, and which we began long 
before this last arrest, and in which we are now to make 
farther progress, that we may arrive to that integrity and 
fulness of duty, “ that our sins may be blotted out, when 
the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of 
the Lord.”* 

SECTION VI. 

Rules for the Practice of Repentance in Sickness . 

1. Let the sick man consider, at what gate his sickness 
entered; and if he can discover the particular, let him in¬ 
stantly, passionately, and with great contrition dash the 
crime in pieces, lest he descend into his grave in the midst 
of a sin, and thence remove into an ocean of eternal sor¬ 
row. But if he only suffers the common fate of man, and 
knows not the particular inlet, he is to be governed by the 
following measures. 

Inquire into the repentance of thy former life particular¬ 
ly ; whether it were of a great and perfect grief, and 
productive of fixed resolutions of holy living, and reduc¬ 
tive of these to act; how many days and nights we have 
spent in sorrow or care, in habitual and actual pursuances 
of virtue; what instrument we have chosen and used 
for the eradication of sin; how we have judged our¬ 
selves, and how punished; and, in sum, whether we 
have by the grace of repentance, changed our life frone 

* Acts iii. 19. 


IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


137 


criminal to virtuous, from one habit to another; and whe¬ 
ther we have paid for the pleasure of our sin by smart or 
sorrow, by the effusion of alms, or pernoctations or abodes 
in prayers, so as the spirit hath been served in our repent¬ 
ance as earnestly and as greatly, as our appetites have been 
provided for, in the days of our shame and folly. 

3. Supply the imperfections of thy repentance by a ge¬ 
neral or universal sorrow for the sins, not only since the 
last communion or absolution, but of thy whole life; for 
all sins known or unknown, repented and unrepented, of 
ignorance or infirmity, which thou knowest, or which others 
have accused thee of; thy clamorous and thy whispering 
sins, the sins of scandal and the sins of a secret conscience, 
of the flesh and of the spirit; for it would be but a sad arrest 
to thy soul wandering in strange and unusual regions, to 
see a scroll of uncancelled sins represented and charged 
upon thee for want of care and notices, and that thy re¬ 
pentance shall become invalid, because of its imperfections. 

4. To this purpose it is usually advised by spiritual 
persons, that the sick man make a universal confession, or 
a renovation and repetition of all the particular confessions 
and accusations of his whole life ; that now, at the foot of 
his account he may represent the sum total to God and his 
conscience, and make provisions for their remedy and par¬ 
don, according to his present possibilities. 

5. Now is the time to make reflex acts of repentance : 
that as, by a general repentance, we supply the want of 
the just extension of parts; so, by this, we may supply the 
proper measures of the intention of degrees. In our health, 
we can conside-r concerning our own acts, whether they be 
real or hypocritical, essential or imaginary, sincere or 
upon interest, integral or imperfect, commensurate or de¬ 
fective. And although it is a good caution of securities, 
after all our care and diligence still to suspect ourselves 
and our own deceptions, and for ever to beg of God par 
don and acceptance in the union of Christ’s passion ana 
intercession ; yet, in proper speaking, reflex acts of repent¬ 
ance, being a suppletory after the imperfection of the 
direct, are then most fit to be used, when we cannot pro¬ 
ceed in and prosecute the direct actions. To repent be¬ 
cause we cannot repent, and to grieve because we cannot 
grieve, was a device invented to serve the turn of the mo¬ 
ther of Peter Gratian : but it was used by her, and so ad- 

m 2 2 p 2 


138 


THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE 


vised to be, in her sickness, and last actions of repentance. 
For, in our perfect health and understanding, if we do not 
understand our first act, we cannot discern our second; 
and if we be not sorry for our sins, we cannot be sorry tor 
want of sorrows; it is a contradiction to say we can ; be¬ 
cause want of sorrow to which we are obliged, is certainly 
a great sin ; and if we can grieve for that, then also for the 
rest; if not for all, then not for this. But in the days of 
weakness the case is otherwise; for then our actions are 
imperfect, our discourse weak, our internal actions not dis¬ 
cernible, our fears great, our work to be abbreviated, and 
our defects to be supplied by spiritual arts ; and therefore 
it is proper and proportionate to our state, and to our ne¬ 
cessity, to beg of God pardon for the imperfections of our 
repentance, acceptance of our weaker sorrows, supplies out 
of the treasures of grace and mercy. And thus repenting 
of the evil and unhandsome adherences of our repentance 
in the whole integrity of the duty it will become a repent¬ 
ance not to be repented of. 

6. Now is the time, beyond which the sick man must, 
at no hand, defer to make restitution of all his unjust pos¬ 
sessions, or other men’s rights, and satisfactions for all in¬ 
juries and violences, according to his obligation and possi¬ 
bilities ; for although many circumstances might impede the 
acting it in our lifetime, and it was permitted to be deferred 
in many cases, because by it justice was not hindered, and 
oftentimes piety and equity were provided for; yet because 
this is the last scene of our life, he that does not act it, so 
far as he can, or put it into certain conditions and order of 
effecting, can never do it again, and therefore then to de¬ 
fer it is to omit it, and leaves the repentance defective in 
an integral and constituent part. 

7. Let the sick man be diligent and watchful, that the 
principle of his repentance be contrition, or sorrow for sins, 
commenced upon the love of God. For although sorrow for 
sins upon any motive may lead us to God by many interme- 
dial passages, and is the threshold of returning sinners ; yet 
it is not good nor effective upon our death-bed; because re¬ 
pentance is not then to begin, but must then be finished 
and completed; and it is to be a supply and preparation 
of all the imperfections of that duty, and therefore it must 
by that time be arrived to contrition; that is, it must have 
grown from fear to love, from the passions of a servant to 


IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


139 

the affections of a son. The reason of which (besides the 
precedent) is this; Because, when our repentance is in this 
state, it supposes the man also in a state of grace, a well- 
grown Christian ; for to hate sin out of the love of God, is 
not the felicity of a new convert, or an infant grace (or if 
it be, that love also is in its infancy:) but it supposes a 
good progress, and the man habitually virtuous, and tend¬ 
ing to perfection ; and therefore contrition, or repentance 
so qualified, is useful to great degrees of pardon ; because 
the man is a gracious person, and that virtue is of good 
degree, and consequently a fit employment for him, that 
shall work no more, but is to appear before his Judge to 
receive the hire of his day. And if his repentance be con¬ 
trition even before this state of sickness, let it be increased 
by spiritual arts, and the proper exercises of charity. 

Means of exciting Contrition , or Repentance of Sins , 
proceeding from the love of God. 

To which purpose the sick man may consider, and is to 
be reminded, (if he does not,) that there are in God all the 
motives and causes of amability in the world; that God is 
so infinitely good, that there are some of the greatest and 
most excellent spirits of heaven, whose work, and whose 
felicity, and whose perfections, and whose nature it is, to 
flame and burn in the brightest and most excellent love ; that 
to love God is the greatest glory of heaven ; that in him there 
are such excellences, that the smallest rays of them commu¬ 
nicated to our weaker understandings, are yet sufficient to 
cause ravishments, and transportations, and satisfactions, 
and joys unspeakable and full of glory; that all the wise 
Christians of the world know and feel such causes to love 
God, that they all profess themselves ready to die for the 
love of God, and the apostles and millions of the martyrs 
did die for him; and although it be harder to live in his 
love than to die for it, yet all the good people, that ever 
gave their names to Christ, did, for his love, endure the 
crucifying their lusts, the mortification of their appetites, 
the contradictions and death of their most passionate natural 
desires ; that kings and queens have quitted their diadems, 
and many married saints have turned their mutual vows into 
the love of Jesus, and married him only, keeping a virgin 
chastity in a married life, that they may more tenderly ex¬ 
press their love to God : that all the good we have, derives 


140 


THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE 


from God’s love to us; and all the good we can hope for 
is the effect of his love, and can descend only upon them 
that love him; that by his love it is, that we receive the 
holy Jesus, and by his love we receive the Holy Spirit, 
and by his love we feel peace and joy within our spirits, 
and by his love we receive the mysterious sacrament 
And what can be greater, than that from the goodness and 
love of God we receive Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, 
and adoption, and the inheritance of sons, and to be co¬ 
heirs with Jesus, and to have pardon of our sins, and a 
divine nature, and restraining grace, and the grace of 
sanctification, and rest and peace within us, and a certain 
expectation of glory ? Who can choose but love him, who, 
when we had provoked him exceedingly, sent his Son to die 
for us, that we might live with him ; who does so desire to 
pardon us and save us, that he hath appointed his holy Son 
continually to intercede for us? that his love is so great, 
that he offers us great kindness, and entreats us to be happy, 
and makes many decrees in heaven concerning the interest 
of our soul, and the very provision and support of our per¬ 
sons ; that he sends an angel to attend upon every of his ser¬ 
vants, and to be their guard and their guide in all their dan¬ 
gers and hostilities ; that for our sakes he restrains the devil 
and put his mightiness in fetters and restraints, and chas¬ 
tises his malice with decrees of grace and safety ; that he 
it is who makes all the creatures serve us, and takes care 
of our sleeps, and preserves all plants and elements, all 
minerals and vegetables, all beasts and birds, all fishes and 
insects for food to us and for ornament, for physic and 
instruction, for variety and wonder, for delight and for 
religion ; that as God is all good in himself, and all good 
to us, so sin is directly contrary to God, to reason, to reli¬ 
gion, to safety and pleasure, and felicity ; that it is a great 
dishonour to a man’s spirit to have been made a fool by a 
weak temptation and an empty lust; and to have rejected 
God, who is so rich, so wise, so good, and so excellent, so 
delicious, and so profitable to us: that all the repentance 
in the world of excellent men does end in contrition, or a 
sorrow for sins proceeding from the love of God; because 
they that are in a state of grace, do not fear hell violently, 
and so long as they remain in God’s favour, although they 
suffer the infirmities of men, yet they are God’s portion; 
and therefore all the repentance of just and holy men, which 


IJN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


141 

is certainly the best, is a repentance not for lower eids, 
but because they are the friends of God, and they are 
full of indignation, that they have done an act against 
the honour of their patron, and their dearest Lord and Fa¬ 
ther : that it is a huge imperfection and a state of weakness 
to need to be moved with fear or temporal respects; and 
they that are so, as yet are either immerged in the affec¬ 
tions of the world or of themselves; and those men that 
bear such a character, are not yet esteemed laudable per¬ 
sons, or men of good natures, or the sons of virtue; that 
no repentance can be lasting, that relies upon any thing 
but the love of God: for temporal motives may cease, and 
contrary contingencies may arise, and fear of hell may be 
expelled by natural or acquired hardnesses, and is always 
the least when we have the most need of it, and most cause 
for it; for the more habitual our sins are, the more cau¬ 
terized our conscience is, the less is the fear of hell, and 
yet our danger is much the greater; that although fear of 
hell, or other temporal motives may be the first inlet to a re¬ 
pentance, yet repentance, in that constitution and under 
those circumstances, cannot obtain pardon, because there 
is in that no union with God, no adhesion to Christ, no en¬ 
dearment of passion or of spirit, no similitude or conform¬ 
ity to the great instrument of our peace, our glorious Me¬ 
diator ; for as yet a man is turned from his sin, but not 
converted to God ; the first and last of our returns to God 
being love, and nothing but love ; for obedience is the first 
part of love, and fruition is the last; and because he that 
does not love God, cannot obey him, therefore he tha* does 
not love him, cannot enjoy him. 

Now that this may be reduced to practice, the sick man 
may be advertised, that in the actions of repentance, he 
separate low, temporal, sensual, and self-ends from his 
thoughts, and so do his repentance, that he may still re¬ 
flect honour upon God; that he confess his justice in punish¬ 
ing, that he acknowledge himself to have deserved the 
worst of evils; that he heartily believe and profess, that if 
he perish finally, yet that God ought to be glorified by that 
sad event, and that he hath truly merited so intolerable a 
calamity ; that he also be put to make acts of election and 
preference, professing that he would willingly endure all 
temporal evils rather than be in the disfavour of God, or in 
the state of sin ; for, by this last instance, he will be quitted 


THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE 


142 

from the suspicion of leaving sin for temporal respects, be¬ 
cause he, by an act of imagination or feigned presence of 
the object to him, entertains the temporal evil, that he may 
leave the sin ; and, therefore, unless he be a hypocrite, does 
not leave the sin to be quit of the temporal evil. And as 
for the other motive of leaving sin out of the fear of hell, 
because that is an evangelical motive conveyed to us by the 
Spirit of God, and is immediate to the love of God ; if the 
schoolmen had pleased, they might have reckoned it as the 
handmaid, and of the retinue of contrition; but the more 
the considerations are sublimed above this, of the greater 
effect and the more immediate to pardon will be the re¬ 
pentance. 

8. Let the sick persons do frequent actions of repentance, 
by way of prayer for all those sins which are spiritual, and 
in which no restitution or satisfaction material can be made, 
and whose contrary acts cannot in kind be exercised. For 
penitential prayers, in some cases, are the only instances 
of repentance that can be. An envious man, if he gives 
God hearty thanks for the advancement of his brother, hath 
done an act of mortification of his envy, as directly as cor¬ 
poral austerities are an act of chastity, and an enemy to 
uncleanness : and if I have seduced a person that is dead 
or absent, if I cannot restore him to sober counsels by my 
discourse and undeceiving him, I can only repent of that 
by way of prayer; and intemperance is no way to be re¬ 
scinded or punished by a dying man but by hearty prayers. 
Prayers are a great help in all cases; in some they are 
proper acts of virtue, and direct enemies to sin : but al¬ 
though alone, and in long continuance they alone can cure 
some one or some few little habits, yet they can never alone 
change the state of the man; and therefore are intended to 
be a suppletory to the imperfections of other acts; and, by 
that reason, are the proper and most pertinent employment 
of a clinic or death-bed penitent. 

9. In those sins, whose proper cure is mortification cor¬ 
poral, the sick man is to supply that part of his repentance 
by a patient submission to the rod of sickness; for sick¬ 
ness does the work of penances, or sharp afflictions and 
dry diet, perfectly well: to which, if we also put our wills 
and make it our act by an after election, by confessing the 
justice of God, by bearing it sweetly, by beggingit may be 
medicinal, there is nothing wanting to the perfection of this 


IN TIME 'JF SICKNESS. 


143 

part, but that God confirm our patience, and hear our 
prayers. When the guilty man runs to punishment, the 
injured person is prevented, and hath no whither to go but 
to forgiveness. 

10. I have learned but of one suppletory more, for the 
perfection and proper exercise of a sick man’s repentance ; 
but it is such a one as will go a great way in the abolition 
of our past sins, and making our peace with God even after 
a less severe life ; and that is, that the sick man do some 
heroical actions in the matter of charity, or religion, of jus¬ 
tice, or severity. There is a story of an infamous thief, who, 
having begged his pardon of the emperor Mauricius, was 
yet put into the hospital of St. Sampson, where he so plenti¬ 
fully bewailed his sins in the last agonies of his death, 
that the physician who attended, found him unexpectedly 
dead, and over his face a handkerchief bathed in tears; 
and soon after somebody or other pretended to a revela¬ 
tion of this man’s beatitude. It was a rare grief that was 
noted in this man, which begot in that age a confidence of 
his being saved ; and that confidence (as things then went) 
was quickly called a revelation. But it was a stranger se¬ 
verity, which is related by Thomas Cahtipratanus concern¬ 
ing a young gentleman condemned for robbery and violence, 
who had so deep a sense of his sin, that he was not con¬ 
tent with a single death, but begged to be tormented, and 
cut in pieces joint by joint, with intermedial senses, that 
he might, by such a smart, signify a greater sorrow. Some 
have given great estates to the poor and to religion; some 
have built colleges for holy persons; many have suffered 
martyrdom : and though those that died under the con¬ 
duct of the Maccabees, in defence of their country and 
religion, had pendants on their breasts consecrated to the 
idols of the Jamnenses; yet that they gave their lives in 
such a cause with so g-eat a duty (the biggest things they 
could do or give,) it was esteemed to prevail hugely to¬ 
wards the pardon and acceptation of their persons. An he¬ 
roic action of virtue is a huge compendium of religion : for 
if it be attained to by the usual measures and progress of 
a Christian, from inclination to act, from act to habit, from 
habit to abode, from abode to reigning, from reigning to 
perfect possession, from possession to extraordinary ema¬ 
nations, that is, to heroic actions, then it must needs do the 
work of man, by being so great towards the work of God : 


144 


THE PRACTICE OP REPENTANCE 


but if a man comes thither per saltum , or on a sudden 
(which is seldom seen) then it supposes the man always 
well inclined, but abused by accident or hope, by confi¬ 
dence or ignorance; then it supposes the man for the pre¬ 
sent in a great fear of evil, and a passionate desire of par¬ 
don ; it supposes his apprehensions great, and his time 
little : and what the event of that will be, no man can tell; 
but it is certain, that to some purposes God will account 
for our religion on our death-bed, not by the measures of 
our time, but the eminency of affection (as said Celestine 
the First;) that is, supposing the man in the state of grace 
oj; in the revealed possibility of salvation, then an heroical 
act hath the reward of a longer series of good actions, in 
an even and ordinary course of virtue. 

11. In what can remain for the perfecting of a sick man’s 
repentance, he is to be helped by the ministries of a spirit¬ 
ual guide. 

SECTION VII. 

Acts of Repentance , by way of Prayer and Ejaculation, to 
be used especially by Old men in their age, and by all 
Men in their Sickness. 

Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the 
Lord. Let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God 
in the heavens. We have transgressed and rebelled : and 
thou hast not pardoned. Thou hast covered with anger 
and persecuted us; thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied. 
O cover not thyself with a cloud ; but let our prayer pass 
through. Lam. iii. 40—44. 

1 have sinned: what shall 1 do unto thee, O thou pre¬ 
server of men ? Why hast thou set me as a mark against 
thee, so that I am a burthen to myself? And why dost 
not thou pardon my transgression, and take away mine ini¬ 
quity 0 for now shall I sleep in the dust, and thou shalt seek 
me in the morning, but I shall not be. Job vii. 20, 21. 

The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against his 
commandments. Hear, I pray, all ye people, behold my 
sorrow. Behold, O Lord I am in distress; my bowels are 
troubled; my heart is turned within me ; for I have griev¬ 
ously rebelled. Lam. i. 18. 40. 

Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever; thy throne from 
generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget 
us for ever, and forsake us so long time ? Turn thou us 


IN TIME OF SICKNESS. 


145 


unto thee, O Lord, and so shall we be turned: renew out 
days as of old. O reject me not utterly, and be not exceed¬ 
ing wroth against thy servant. Lam. v. 19—22. 

O remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgres¬ 
sions ; but according to thy mercies remember thou me, 
for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord. Psal. xxv. 7. Do thou for 
me, O God the Lord, for thy name’s sake; because thy 
mercy is good deliver thou me. For I am poor and needy, 
and my heart is wounded within me. I am gone like the 
shadow that declineth; I am tossed up and down as the 
locust. Psal. cix. 21—23. 

Then Zaccheus stood forth, and said, Behold, Lord, half 
of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any 
man, I restore him fourfold. Luke xix. 8. 

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and consider my desire. Psal. 
cxliii. 1. Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the in¬ 
cense, and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sa¬ 
crifice. Psal. cxli. 3. And enter not into judgment with 
thy servant; for in thy sight shall no man living be justi¬ 
fied. Teach me to do the thing that pleaseth thee, for thou 
art my God: let thy loving Spirit lead me forth into the 
land of righteousness. Psal. cxliii. 2. 10. 

I will speak of mercy and judgment : unto thee, O Lord, 
will I make my prayer. I will behave myself wisely in a 
perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me ? I will 
walk in my house with a perfect heart. I will set no wick¬ 
ed thing before mine eyes; I hate the work of them that 
turn aside : it shall not cleave to me. Psal. ci. 1—3, 

Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine ini¬ 
quities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a 
right spirit within me. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, 
O God, from malice, envy, the follies of lust and violences, 
of passion, &c. thou God of my salvation ; and my tongue 
shall sing aloud of thy righteousness. Psal. li. 9, 10. 14. 

The sacrifice of God is a broken heart; a broken and a 
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Ver. 17. 

Lord, I have done amiss; I have been deceive d ; let so 
great a wrong as this be removed, and let it be so no more. 

The Prayer for the Grace and Perfection of Repentance. 

1 . 

O almighty God, thou art the great judge of all the 
world, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of 
n 2 Q 


140 


THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE 


mercies, the father of men and angels : thou lovest not that 
a sinner should perish, but delightest in our conversion 
and salvation, and hast, in our Lord Jesus Christ, establish¬ 
ed the covenant of repentance, and promised pardon to all 
them that confess their sins and forsake them ,* O my God, 
be thou pleased to work in me, what thou hast commanded 
should be in me. Lord, I am a dry tree, who neither have 
brought forth fruit unto thee and unto holiness, nor have 
wept out salutary tears, the instrument of life and restitu¬ 
tion, but have behaved myself like an unconcerned person 
in the ruins and breaches of my soul: but, O God, thou art 
my God, early will I seek thee : my soul thirsteth for thee, 
in a barren and thirsty land, where no water is.* Lord, 
give me the grace of tears and pungent sorrow; let my heart 
be as a land of rivers of waters, and my head a fountain of 
tears; turn my sin into repentance, and let my repentance 
proceed to pardon and refreshment. 

II. 

Support me with thy graces, strengthen me with thy 
Spirit, soften my heart with the fire of thy love, and the 
dew of heaven, with penitential showers : make my care pru¬ 
dent, and the remaining portion of my days like the per¬ 
petual watches of the night, full of caution and observance, 
strong and resolute, patient and severe. I remember, O 
Lord, that I did sin with greediness and passion, with great 
desires and an unabated choice ; O let me be as great in my 
repentance, as ever I have been in my calamity and shame : 
let my hatred of sin be great as my love to thee, and both 
as near to infinite, as my proportion can receive. 

III. 

O Lord, I renounce all affection to sin, and would not 
buy my health nor redeem my life with doing any thing 
against the laws of my God, but would rather die than of¬ 
fend thee. O dearest Saviour, have pity upon thy ser¬ 
vant ; let me by thy sentence, be doomed to perpetual 
penance during the abode of this life; let every sigh be 
the expression of a repentance, and every groan an accent 
of spiritual life, and every stroke of my disease a punish¬ 
ment of my sin, and an instrument of pardon; that, at my 
return to the land of innocence and pleasure, I may eat ot 
the votive sacrifice of the supper of the Lamb, that was 

* Psal. lxiii. 1. 


IN TIME 01 SICKNESS. 


147 

from the beginning of the world, slain for the sins of every 
sorrowful and returning sinner. O grant me sorrow here 
and joy hereafter, through Jesus Christ, who is our hope, 
the resurrection of the dead, the justifier of a sinner, and 
the glory of all faithful souls. Amen. 

A prayer for Pardon of Sins , to be said frequently in time 
of Sickness, and in all the portions of Old Age. 

I* 

O eternal and most gracious Father, I humbly throw my¬ 
self down at the foot of thy mercy seat, upon the confidence 
of thy essentia] mercy, and thy commandment, that we 
should come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may 
find mercy in time of need. O my God, hear the prayers 
and cries of a sinner, who calls earnestly for mercy. Lord, 
my needs are greater than all the degrees of my desire can 
be ; unless thou hast pity upon me, I perish infinitely and 
intolerably; and then there will be one voice fewer in the 
choir of singers, who shall recite thy praises to eternal 
ages. But, O Lord, in mercy deliver my soul. O save 
me for thy mercy’s sake.* For, in the second death, there 
is no remembrance of thee : in that grave who shall give 
thee thanks? 

II. 

O just and dear God, my sins are innumerable ; they are 
upon my soul in multitudes ; they are a burden too heavy 
for me to bear; they already bring sorrow and sickness, 
shame and displeasure, guilt and a decaying spirit, a sense 
of thy present displeasure, and fear of worse, of infinitely 
worse. But it is to thee so essential, so delightful, so 
usual, so desired by thee to show mercy, that although my 
sin be very great, and my fear proportionable, yet thy mer¬ 
cy is infinitely greater than all the world, and my hope 
and my comfort rise* up in proportions towards it, that I 
trust the devils shall never be able to reprove it, nor my 
own weakness discompose it. Lord, thou hast sent thy 
Son to die for the pardon of my sins; thou hast given me 
thy Holy Spirit as a seal of adoption to consign the article 
of remission of sins ; thou hast, for all my sins, still con¬ 
tinued to invite me to conditions of life by thy ministers the 
prophets ; and thou hast, with variety of holy acts, softened 
my spirit, and possessed my fancy, and instructed my un- 

* Psal. vi. 4, 5. 


148 


THE PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE 


derstanding, and bended and inclined my will, and direct¬ 
ed or overruled my passions in order to repentance and par¬ 
don ; and why should not thy servant beg passionately, and 
humbly hope for, the effects of all these thy strange and 
miiaculous acts ol loving kindness ? Lord, I deserve it not, 
but I hope thou wilt pardon all my sins; and I beg it of thee 
lor Jesus Christ his sake, whom thou hast made the great en¬ 
dearment of thy promises, and the foundation of our hopes, 
and the mighty instrument whereby we can obtain of thee 
whatsoever we need and can receive. 


ill. 


O my God, how shall thy servant be disposed to receive 
such a favour, which is so great, that the ever-blessed Jesus 
diddie to purchase it for us; so great that the falling 
angels never could hope, and never shall obtain it? Lord, 
I do from my soul forgive all that have sinned against me: 
O forgive me my sins, as I forgive them that have sinned 
against me. Lord, I confess my sins unto thee daily, by the 
accusations, and secret acts of conscience ,* and if we con¬ 
fess our sins, thou hast called it a part of justice to forgive 
us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 
Lord, 1 put my trust in thee; and thou art ever gracious to 
them that put their trust in thee. I call upon my God for 
mercy ; and thou art always more ready to hear than we to 
pray. But all that I can do, and all that I am, and all that 
1 know of myself is nothing but sin, and infirmity, and 
misery: therefore I go forth of myself, and throw myself 
wholly into the arms of thy mercy through Jesus Christ, and 
beg of thee for his death and passion’s sake, by his resur- 
rection and ascension, by all the parts of our redemption, 
and thy infinite mercy, in which thou pleasest thyself above 
all the works of the creation, to be pitiful and compassion¬ 
ate to thy servant in the abolition of all my sins: so shall 
1 praise thy glories with a tongue not defiled with evil 
language, and a heart purged by thy grace, quitted by thy 

mercy, and absolved by thy sentence, from generation to 
generation. Amen. 


An act of holy Resolution of Amendment of Life , 
in case of Recovery. 

J? '! l0st j ust a n<l most merciful Lord God, who hast sent 
evil diseases, sorrow and fear, trouble and uneasiness, 


AN ANALYSIS OR EXPLICATION, &c. 


149 


briars and thorns, into the world, and planted them in our 
houses, and round about our dwellings, to keep sin from 
our souls, or to drive it thence ; I humbly beg of thee, that 
this my sickness may serve the ends of the spirit, and be 
a messenger of spiritual life, an instrument of reducing me 
to more religious and sober courses. I say, O Lord, that 
1 am unready and unprepared in my accounts, having 
thrown away great portions of my time in vanity, and set 
myself hugely back in the accounts of eternity; and I had 
need live my life over again, and live it better; but thy 
counsels are in the great deep, and thy footsteps in the wa¬ 
ter ; and I know not what thou wilt determine of me. If 
I die I throw myself into the arms of the holy Jesus, whom 
I love above all things; and if I perish I know I have de- 
* served it; but thou wilt not reject him that loves thee. 
But if I recover, I will live, by thy grace and help, to do 
the work of God, and passionately pursue my interest of 
heaven, and serve thee in the labour of love, with the cha¬ 
rities of a holy zeal, and the diligence of a firm and hum¬ 
ble obedience. Lord, I will dwell in thy temple, and in 
thy service ; religion shall be my employment, and alms 
shall be my recreation, and patience shall be my rest, and 
to do thy will shall be my meat and drink; and to live 
shall be Christ, and then to die shall be gain. 

“ O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength 
before I go hence, and be no more seen.” “ Thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen. 

SECTION VIII. 

An Analysis or Resolution of the Decalogue, and the special 
Precepts of the Gospel, describing the Duties enjoined, 
and the sins forbidden respectively ; for the assistance of 
sick Men in making their Confessions to God and his 
Ministers, and the rendering their Repentance more par¬ 
ticular and perfect. 

I. Comm. Thou shalt have none other Gods but me. 
Duties commanded are, 1. To love God above all 
things. 2. To obey and fear him. 3. To worship him 
with prayers, vows, and thanksgivings, presenting to him 
our souls and bodies, and all such actions and expressions, 
which the consent of nations, or the law and customs of the 
place where we live, have appropriated to God. 4. To 
design all to God’s glory. 5. To inquire after his will. 


AN ANALYSIS OR EXPLICATION 


150 

6. To believe all his word. 7. To submit to his provi¬ 
dence. 8. To proceed towards all our lawful ends by such 
means as himself hath appointed. 9. To speak and think 
honourably of God, and recite his praises, and confess his 
attributes and perfections. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. Who love them¬ 
selves or any of the creatures inordinately and intem- 
perately. 2. They that despise or neglect any of the Divine 
precepts. 3. They that pray to unknown, or false gods. 
4. They that disbelieve, or deny, there is a God. 5. 
They that make vows to creatures. 6. Or say prayers to 
the honour of men, or women, or angels; as paternosters 
to the honour of the Virgin Mary, or St. Peter, which is a 
taking a part of that honour which is due to God, and 
giving it to the creature ; it is a religion paid to men and 
women out of God’s proper portion, out of prayers directed 
to God immediately ; and it is an act contrary to that reli¬ 
gion which makes good the last end of all things; for this, 
through our addresses to God, passes something to the 
creatures, as if they stood beyond him; for by the inter- 
medial worship paid to God, they ultimately do honour to 
the man or angel. 7. They that make consumptive obla¬ 
tions to the creatures ; as the Collyridians, who offered 
cakes, and those that burnt incense or candles to the 
Virgin Mary. 8. They that give themselves to the devil, 
or make contracts with him, and use fantastic conversation 
with him. 9. They that consult with witches and fortune¬ 
tellers. 10. They that rely upon dreams and superstitious 
observances. 11. That use charms, spells, superstitious 
words and characters, verses of psalms, the consecrated 
elements to cure diseases, to be shot-free, to recover stolen 
goods, or inquire into secrets. 12. That are wilfully igno¬ 
rant of the' laws of God, or love to be deceived in their 
persuasions, that they may sin with confidence. 13. They 
that neglect to pray to God. 14. They that arrogate to 
themselves the glory of any action or power, and do not give 
the glory to God, as Herod. 15. They that doubt of, or 
disbelieve, any article of the Creed, or any proposition of 
Scripture, or put false glosses to serve secular or vicious 
ends against their conscience, or with violence any way 
done to their reason. 16. They that violently or passion¬ 
ately pursue any temporal end with an eagerness greater 
than the thing is in prudent account. 17. They that 


OF THE DECALOGUE. 


151 

make religion to serve ill ends, or do good to evil 
purposes, or evil to good purposes. 18. They that accuse 
God of injustice or unmercifulness, remissness or cruelty; 
such as are the presumptuous, and the desperate. 19. 
All hypocrites and pretenders to religion, walking in forms 
and shadows, but denying the power of godliness. 20. 
All impatient persons; all that repine or murmur against 
the prosperities of the wicked, or the calamities of the 
godly, or their own afflictions. 21. All that blaspheme God 
or speak dishonourable things of so sacred a Majesty. 22. 
They that tempt God, or rely upon his protection against 
his rules, and without his promise, and besides reason, en¬ 
tering into danger, from which, without a miracle, they 
cannot be rescued. 23. They that are bold in the midst or 
judgment, and fearless in the midst of Divine vengeance 
and the accents of his anger. 

II. Comm. Thou slialt not make to thyself any graven 

image , nor worship it. 

The moral duties of this commandment are, 1. To wor¬ 
ship God with all bodily worship and external forms of 
address, according to the custom of the church we live in. 
2. To believe God to be a spiritual and pure substance, 
without any visible form or shape. 3. To worship God 
in ways of his own appointing, or by his proportions, or 
measures of nature, and right reason; or public and holy 
customs. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. That make any 
image or pictures of the Godhead, or fancy any likeness 
to him. 2. They that use images in their religion, design¬ 
ing or addressing any religious worship to them ; for if 
this thing could be naturally tolerable, yet it is too near an 
intolerable for a jealous God to suffer. 3. They that deny 
to worship God with lowly reverence of their bodies, ac¬ 
cording as the church expresses her reverence to God ex¬ 
ternally. 4. They that invent or practise superstitious 
worshippings, invented by man against God’s word, or with¬ 
out reason, or besides the public customs or forms of wor¬ 
shipping, either foolishly or ridiculously, without the pur¬ 
pose of order, decency, proportion to a wise or a religious 
end, in prosecution of some virtue or duty. 

III. Comm. Thou shalt not take God's name in vain. 

The duties of this commandment are, 1. To honour and 


152 AN ANALYSIS OR EXPLICATION 

revere the most holy name of God. 2. To invocate his 
name directly or by consequence, in all solemn and per¬ 
mitted adjurations, or public oaths. 3. To use all things 
and persons, upon whom his name is called, or any ways 
imprinted, with a regardful and separate manner of usage, 
different from common, and far from contempt and scorn. 
4. To swear in truth and judgment. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. Who swear 
vainly and customarily, without just cause, without compe¬ 
tent authority. 2. They that blaspheme or curse God. 3. They 
that speak of God without grave cause or solemn occasion. 
4. They that forswear themselves; that is, they that do not 
perform their vow’s to God ; or that swear, or call God to 
witness to a lie. 5. They that swear rashly, or malicious¬ 
ly, to commit a sin, or an act of revenge. 6. They that 
swear by any creature falsely, or any way, but as it relates 
to God, and consequently invokes his testimony. 7. All 
curious inquirers into the secrets, and intruders into the 
mysteries and bidden things of God. 8. They that curse 
God, or curse a creature by God. 9. They that profane 
churches, holy utensils, holy persons, holy customs, holy 
sacraments. 10. They that provoke others to swear vo¬ 
luntarily, and by design, or incuriously, or negligently, 
when they might avoid it. 11. They that swear to things 
uncertain and unknown. 

IV. Comm. Remember that thou keep holy the 

Sabbath-day. 

The duties of this commandment are, 1. To set apart 
some portions of our time for the immediate offices of reli¬ 
gion, and glorification of God. 2. This is to be done, ac¬ 
cording as God or his holy church hath appointed. 3. One 
day in seven is to be set apart. 4. The Christian day is 
to be subrogated into the place of the Jew’s day : the re- 
* surrection of Christ and the redemption of man was a 
greater blessing than to create him. 5. God on that day 
to be worshipped and acknowledged as our Creator, and as 
our Saviour. 6. The day to be spent in holy offices, in 
hearing Divine service, public prayers, frequenting the con¬ 
gregations, hearing the word of God read or expounded, 
reading good books, meditation, alms, reconciling enmi¬ 
ties, remission of burdens and of offences, of debts and of 
work, friendly offices, neighbourhood, and provoking one 


OF THE DECALOGUE 


155 


another to good works; and to this end all servile works 
must be omitted, excepting necessary and charitable of¬ 
fices to men or beasts, to ourselves or others. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. That do, or com¬ 
pel or entice others to do, servile works without the cases 
of necessity or chaiity, to be estimated according to com¬ 
mon and prudent accounts. 2. They that refuse or ne¬ 
glect to come to the public assemblies of the church, to 
hear and assist at the Divine offices entirely. 3. They that 
spend the day in idleness, forbidden or vain recreations, 
or the actions of sin and folly. 4. They that buy and sell 
without the cases of permission. 5. They that trave* un¬ 
necessary journeys. 6. They that act or assist in conten¬ 
tions or law-suits, markets, fairs, &c. 7. They that on that 
day omit their private devotion, unless the whole day be 
spent in public. 8. They that, by any cross or contradic¬ 
tory actions against the customs of the church, do purpose¬ 
ly desecrate or unhallow and make the day common; as 
they that, in despite and contempt, fast upon the Lord’s day, 
lest they may celebrate the festival after the manner of the 
Christians. 

V. Comm. Honour thy father and thy mother. 

The duties are, 1. To do honour and reverence to, and 
to love our natural parents. 2. To obey all their domestic 
commands; for in them the scene of their authority lies. 

3. To give them maintenance and support in their needs. 

4. To obey kings and all that are in authority. 5. To pay 
tribute and honours, custom and reverence. 6. To do re¬ 
verence to the aged and all our betters. 7. To obey our mas¬ 
ters, spiritual governors and guides, in those things which 
concern their several respective interests and authority. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. That despise 
their parents’ age and infirmity. 2. That are ashamed of 
their poverty and extraction. 3. That publish their vices, 
errors, and infirmities, to shame them. 4. That refuse and 
reject all or any of their lawful commands. 5. Children that 
marry without or against their consent, when it may be 
reasonably obtained. 6. That curse them, from whom they 
receive so many blessings. 7. That grieve the souls of their 
parents, by not complying in their desires, and observing 
their circumstances. 8. That hate their persons, that mock 
them, or use uncomely jestings. 9. i hat discovei their 


154 AN ANALYSIS, OR EXPLICATION 

nakedness voluntarily. 10. That murmur against theif 
injunctions, and obey them involuntarily. 11. All rebels 
against their kings, or the supreme power, in which it is 
legally and justly invested. 12. That refuse to pay tributes 
and impositions imposed legally. 13. They that disobey 
their masters, murmur or repine against their commands, 
abuse or deride their persons, talk rudely, &c. 14. They 

that curse the king in their heart, or speak evil of the ruler- 
of their people. 15. All that are uncivil and rude towards 
aged persons, mockers and scorners of them. 

VI. Comm. Thou shalt do no murder. 

7'he duties are, 1. To preserve our own lives, the lives 
of our relatives, and all with whom we converse (or who 
can need us, and we assist, by prudent, reasonable, and 
wary defences, advocations, discoveries of snares, &c.) 
2. To preserve our health, and the integrity of our bodies 
and minds, and of others. 3. To preserve and follow 
peace with all men. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. That destroy the 
life of a man or woman, himself or any other. 2. That do 
violence to, or dismember or hurt, any part of the body with 
evil intent. 3. That fight duels, or commence unjust wars. 

4. They that willingly hasten their own or others’death. 

5. That by oppression or violence imbitter the spirits of 
any, so as to make their life sad, and their death hasty. 

6. They that conceal the dangers of their neighbour, which 
they can safely discover. 7. They that sow strife and 
contention among neighbours. 8. They that refuse to 
rescue or preserve those, whom they can, and are obliged 
to preserve. 9. They that procure abortion. 10. They 
that threaten, or keep men in fears, or hate them. 

VII. Comm. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

The duties are, 1. To preserve our bodies in the chas¬ 
tity of a single life, or of marriage. 2. To keep all the 
parts of our bodies in the care and severities of chastity; 
so that we be restrained in our eyes as well as in our feet. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. Who are adul¬ 
terous, incestuous, sodomitical, or commit fornication. 2. 
They that commit folly alone, dishonouring their own bodies 
with softness and wantonness. 3. They that immoderate¬ 
ly let loose the reins of their bolder appetite, though 


OF THE DECALOGUE. 


155 


within the protection of marriage. 4. They that by wan¬ 
ton gestures, wandering eyes, lascivious dressings, disco 
very of the nakedness of themselves or others, filthy dis¬ 
course, high diet, amorous songs, balls and revellings, tempt 
and betray themselves or others to folly. 5. They that marry 
a woman divorced for adultery. 6. They that divorce their 

wives except for adultery, and marry another. 

* 

VIII. Comm. Thou shalt not steal. 

The duties are, 1. To give every man his due. 2. To 
permit every man to enjoy his own goods and estate quietly. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. That injure any 
man’s estate by open violence or by secret robbery, by 
stealth or cozenage, by arts of bargaining or vexatious law¬ 
suits. 2. That refuse or neglect to pay their debts, when 
they are able. 3. That are forward to run into debt, know¬ 
ingly beyond their power, without hopes or purposes of re¬ 
payment. 4. Oppressors of the poor. 5. That exact usury 
of necessitous persons, or of any beyond the permissions 
of equity, as determined by the laws. 6. All sacrilegious 
persons; people that rob God of his dues or of his pos¬ 
sessions. 7. All that game, viz. at cards and dice, &c. to 
the prejudice and detriment of other men’s estates. 8. 
They that embase coin and metals, and obtrude them for 
perfect and natural. 9. That break their promises to the 
detriment of a third person. 10. They that refuse to stand 
to their bargains. 11. They that by negligence imbecile 
other men’s estates, spoiling or letting any thing perish 
which is intrusted to them. 12. That refuse to restore the 
pledge. 

IX. Comm. Thou shalt not bear f'lse witness . 

The duties are, 1. To give testimony to truth, when we 
are called to it by competent authority. 2. To preserve 
the good name of our neighbours. 3. To speak well of 
them that deserve it. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. That speak fa.fce 
things in judgment, accusing their neighbour unjustly, or 
denying his crime publicly, when they are asked, and can 
be commanded lawfully to tell it. 2. Flatterers, and 3. 
Slanderers; 4. Backbiters; and 5. Detractors. 6. They 
that secretly raise jealousies and suspicion of their neigh- 
hours, causelessly. 


156 


EXPLICATION OF THE DECALOGUE. 


X. Comm. Thou shalt not covet. 

The duties are, 1. To be content with the portion God 
hath given us. 2. Not to be covetous of other men’s goods. 

They sin against this commandment, 1. That envy the 
prosperity of other men. 2. They that desire passionately 
to be possessed of what is their neighbour’s. 3. They that 
with greediness pursue riches, honours, pleasures, and cu¬ 
riosities. 4. They that are too careful, troubled, distracted, 
or amazed, affrighted and afflicted with being solicitous in 
the conduct of temporal blessings. 

These are the general lines of duty, by which we may 
discover our failings, and be humbled, and confess accord¬ 
ingly ; only the penitent person is to remember, that al¬ 
though these are the kinds of sins described after the sense 
of the Jewish church, which consisted principally in the ex¬ 
ternal action, or the deed done, and had no restraints upon 
the thoughts of men, save only in the tenth commandment, 
which was mixed, and did relate as much to action as to 
thought; (as appears in the instances;) yet upon us Chris¬ 
tians there are many circumstances and degrees of obliga¬ 
tion, which endear our duty with greater severity and ob¬ 
servation ; and the penitent is to account of himself and 
enumerate his sins, not only by external actions, or the deed 
done, but by words and by thoughts; and so to reckon, if 
he have done it directly or indirectly, if he have caused 
others to do it, by tempting or encouraging, by assisting or 
counselling, by not dissuading when he could and ought, 
by fortifying their hands or hearts, or not weakening their 
evil purposes : if he have designed or contrived its action, 
desired it or loved it, delighted in the thought, remember¬ 
ed the past sin with pleasure or without sorrow : these are 
the by-ways of sin, and the crooked lanes, in which a man 
may wander and be lost, as certainly as in the broad high¬ 
ways of iniquity. 

But besides this, our blessed Lord and his apostles have 
added divers other precepts ; some of which have been with 
some violence reduced to the decalogue, and others have 
not been noted at all in the catalogues of confession. I shall 
therefore describe them entirely, that the sick man may 
discover his failings, that, by the mercies of God in Jesus 
Christ, and by the instrument of repentance, lie may be 
presented pure and spotless before the throne of God. 


SPECIAL PRECEPTS OF THE GOSPEL. 


157 


The special Precepts of the Gospel. 

1. Prayer, frequent, fervent, holy, and persevering. 3 2. 
Faith/ 3. Repentance. 0 4. Poverty of spirit, as opposed 
to ambition and high designs.* 5. And in it is humility, or 
sitting down in the lowest place, and in giving honour to 
go before another. 6 6. Meekness, as it is opposed to way¬ 
wardness, fretfulness, immoderate grieving, disdain and 
scorn/ 7. Contempt of the world. 8. Prudence, or the 
advantageous conduct of religion. 5 9. Simplicity, or sin¬ 
cerity in words and actions, pretences and substances. 5 
10. IIope. h 11. Hearing the word. 12. Reading. k 13. 
Assembling together. 1 14. Obeying them that have the 
rule over us in spiritual affairs.™ 15. Refusing to commu¬ 
nicate with persons excommunicate ; n whither also may be 
reduced, to reject heretics. 0 16. Charity ; p viz. Lrve to 
God above all things; brotherly kindness, or profitable 
love to our neighbours as ourselves, to be expressed in 
alms, q forgiveness/ and to die for our brethren. 8 17. To 
pluck the right eye, or violently to rescind all occasions of 
sin, though dear to us as an eye/ 18. To reprove our err¬ 
ing brother/ 19. To be patient in afflictions/ and long¬ 
animity is referred hither, or long sufferance ; w which is the 
perfection and perseverance of patience, and is opposed to 
hastiness and weariness of spirit. 20. To be thankful to 
our benefactors ; but above all, in all things, to give thanks 
to God/ 21. To rejoice in the Lord always/ 22. Not 
to quench/ not to grieve/ not to resist the Spirit/ 23. 
To love our wives as Christ loved his church, and to re¬ 
verence our husbands/ 24. To provide for our families/ 
25. Not to be bitter to our children/ 26. To bring them 
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord/ 27. Not 

a 1 Thess. v. 17. Luke xviii. 1. feMarkxvi. 16. c Luke 

xiii. 3. Acts iii. 19. d Matt. v. 3. e Luke xiv. 10. John 

xiii. 14. /"Matt. v. 5. Col. iii. 12. gMatt. x. 16. 1 Thess. 

v. 8. h Rom. viii. 24. i Luke xvi. 29. Mark iv. 24. k 1 

Tim. iv. 13. I Heb. x. 25. m. Heb. xiii. 17. Matt, xviii. 17. 
w 2 Thess. iii. 6. 2 Ep. John x. o Titus iii. 10. p Colos. 

iii. 14. 1 Tim. i. 5. 2 Tim. ii. 22. q Mark xii. 30. r Matt. 

vi. 14. si John iii. 16. t Matt, xviii. 9. u Matt, xviii, 

15. v James i. 4. Luke xxi. 19. to Heb. xii. 3. Gal. v. 9, 
x Eph. v. 20. 2 Thess. i. 3. Luke vi. 32. 2 Tim. iii. 2. y 1 

Thess. v. 16. Philip, iii. 1. and iv. 4. z 1 Thess. v. 19. a Eph,. 

iv. 30. b Acts vii. 51. c Ephes. v. 33. d 1 Tim. v. 8. 

e Coloss. iii. 21. / Ephes. vi. 4. 

o 2 R 


THE SPECIAL PRECEPTS 


158 

to despise prophesying.* 28. To be gentle, and easy to be 
entreated . 11 29. To give no scandal or offence . 1 30. To 
follow after peace with all men, and to make peace/ 31. 
Not to go to law before the unbelievers . 1 32. To do all 
things that are of good report, or the actions of public 
honesty ; m abstaining from all appearances of evil, n 33. 
To convert souls, or turn sinners from the error of their 
ways . 0 34. To confess Christ before all the world. p 35. 
To resist unto blood if God calls us to it. q 36. To rejoice 
in tribulation for Christ’s sake/ 37. To remember and 
show forth the Lord’s death till his second coming,® by 
celebrating the Lord’s supper/ 38. To believe all the New 
Testament/ 39. To add nothing to St. John’s last book, 
that is, to pretend to no new revelations/ 40. To keep the 
customs of the church, her festivals and solemnities; lest 
we be reproved, as the Corinthians were by St. Paul. 
“We have no such customs, nor the churches of God.” w 
41. To contend earnestly for the faith/ Not to be con¬ 
tentious in matters not concerning the eternal interest of 
our souls: but in matters indifferent to have faith to our¬ 
selves/ 42. Not to make schisms or divisions in the 
body of the church/ 43. To call no man master upon earth, 
but to acknowledge Christ our master and lawgiver/ 44. 
Not to domineer over the Lord’s heritage . 11 45. To try all 
things, and keep that which is best/ 46. To be temperate 
in all things/ 47. To deny ourselves/ 48. To mortify our 
lusts and their instruments/ 49. To lend, looking for nothing 
again, nothing by way of increase, nothing by way of recom¬ 
pense/ 50. To watch and stand in readiness against the 
coming of the Lord/ 51. Not to be angry without cause/ 
52. Not at all to revile/ 53. Not to swear . 1 54. Not to re¬ 
spect persons .” 1 55. To lay hands suddenly on no man/ 
[This especially pertains to bishops : to whom also, and to 

g 1 Thess. v. 20. h 2 Tim. ii. 24. i Matt, xviii. 7. 1 Cor, 
x. 32. k Heb. xii. 14. I 1 Cor. vi. 1. m Philip, iv. 8. 2 Cor. 
viii. 21. * n 1 Thess. v. 22. o James v. 19, 20. p Matt. x. 32. 
q Heb. xii. 4. r Matt. v. 12. James i. 2. s Luke xxii. 19. 
t 1 Cor. xi. 26. u John xx. 30, 31. Acts iii. 23. Mark i. 1. Luke • 
x. 16. v Rev. xxii. 18. w 1 Cor. xi. 16. x Jude 3. y Rom. 
xiv. 13, 22. z Rom. xvi. 17. a Matt, xxiii. 8—10. b 1 Pet. 
v. 3. cl John iv. 1. 1 Thess. v. 21. d 1 Cor. ix. 25. Tit. ii. 2. 
s Matt. xvi. 24. f Col. iii. 5. Rom. viii. 13. g Luke vi. 34, 35. 
h Matt. xxiv. 42. i Matt. v. 22. k 1 Cor. vi. 10. I Matt. v. 
14. m James ii. 1. n 1 Tim. v. 22. 


OF THE GOSPEL. 


159 


ail ecclesiastical order, it is enjoined, that they preach the 
word, 0 that they be instant in season and out of season, that 
they rebuke, reprove, exhort with all long-suffering and doc¬ 
trine.] £>6. To keep the Lord’s day, (derived into an obli¬ 
gation from a practice apostolical.) 57. To do all things 
to the glory of God. p 58. To hunger and thirst after righ¬ 
teousness and its rewards.* 1 59. To avoid foolish ques¬ 
tions/ 60. To pray for persecutors, and to do good to them 
that persecute us, and despitefully use us/ 61. To pray fo 
all men/ 62. To maintain good works for necessary uses. 
63. To work with our own hands, that we be not burden 
some to others, avoiding idleness/ 64. To be perfect, as our 
heavenly Father is perfects 65. To be liberal and frugal; 
for he that will call us to account for our time, will also for 
the spending our money. 1 66. Not to use uncomely jest- 
ings. y 67. Modesty ; as opposed to boldness, to curiosity, 
to indeceney/ 68. To be swift to hear, slow to speak/ 
69. To worship the holy Jesus at the mention of his holy 
name; as of old God was at the mention of Jehovah/ 

These are the straight lines of Scripture by which we 
may also measure our obliquities, and discover our crooked 
walking. If the sick man hath not done these things, or 
if he have done contrary to any of them, in any particular, 
he hath cause enough for his sorrow, and matter for his con¬ 
fession ; of which he needs no other forms, but that he 
heartily deplore and plainly enumerate his follies, as a man 
tells the sad stories of his own calamity. 

SECTION IX. 

Of the Sick Man's Practice of Charity and Justice , 

by way of Pule. 

1. Let the sick man set his house in order before he die ; 
state his cases of conscience, reconcile the fractures of his 
family, reunite brethren, cause right understandings, and 
remove jealousies : give good counsels for the future con¬ 
duct of their persons and estates, charm them into religion 
by the authority and advantages of a dying person ; be¬ 
cause the last words of a dying man are like the tooth of a 

0 2 Tim. iv. 2. p 1 Cor. x. 31. q Matt. v. 6. r Tit. iii. 9. 
s Matt. v. 44. Rom. xii. 14. t 1 Tim. ii. 1. u Titus, iii. 14. 
v Ephes. iv. 28. w Matt v. 48. x 1 Pet. iii. 8. 2 Pet. i. 6, 
7. 2 Cor. viii. 7. ix. 5. y Ephes. v. 4. z 1 Tim. ii. 9. a James 
i. 19. b Phil. ii. 10. 


160 


THE PRACTICE OF CHARITT 


wounded lion, making a deeper impression in the agony, 
than in the most vigorous strength. 

2. Let the sick man discover every secret of art, or 
profit, physic, or advantage to mankind, if he may do it 
without the prejudice of a third person. Some persons are 
so uncharitably envious, that they are willing, that a secret 
receipt should die with them, and be buried in their grave 
like treasure in the sepulchre of David. But this, whicn 
is a design of charity, must therefore not be done to any 
man’s prejudice; and the mason of Herodotus, the king 
of Egypt, who kept secret his notice of the king’s treasure, 
and when he was dying, told his son, betrayed his trust 
then, when he should have kept it most sacredly for his 
own interest. In all other cases let thy charity outlive 
thee, that thou mayest rejoice in the mansion of rest, be¬ 
cause, by thy means, many living persons are eased or ad¬ 
vantaged. 

3. Let him make his will with great justice and piety; 
that is, that the right heirs be not defrauded for collateral 
respects, fancies, or indirect fondnesses; but the inherit¬ 
ances descend in their legal and due channel; and in those 
things, where we have a liberty, that we take the opportunity 
of doing virtuously, that is, of considering how God may 
be best served by our donatives, or how the interest of 
any virtue may be promoted; in which we are principally 
to regard the necessities of our nearest kindred and rela¬ 
tives, servants and friends. 

4. Let the will or testament be made with ingenuity, 
openness, and plain expression, that he may not entail a 
lawsuit upon his posterity and relatives, and make them 
lose their charity, or entangle their estates, or make them 
poorer by the gift. He hath done me no charity, but dies 
in my debt, that makes me sue for a legacy. 

5. It is proper for the state of sickness, and an excellent 
anealing us to burial, that we give alms in this state, so 
burying treasure in our graves that will not perish, but 
rise again in the resurrection of the just. Let the dispen¬ 
sation of our alms be as little intrusted to our executors as 
may be, excepting the lasting and successive portions ; 
but, with our present care, let us exercise the charity, and 
secure the stewardship. It was a custom amongst the old 
Greeks, to bury horses, clothes, arms, and whatsoever was 
dear to the deceased person, supposing they might need 


AND JUSTICE IN SICKNESS. 


161 

them, and that, without clothes, they should be found 
naked by their judges; and all the friends did use to bring 
gifts, by such liberality thinking to promote the interest ol 
their dead. But we may offer our ev ourselves best 
of all; our doles and funeral meals, if they be our own 
early provisions, will then spend the better; and it is good 
so to carry our passing penny in our hand, and by reaching 
that hand to the poor, make a friend in the everlasting ha¬ 
bitations. He that gives with his own hand, shall be sure 
to find it, and the poor shall find it; but he that trusts exe¬ 
cutors with his charity, and the economy and issues of 
his virtue, by which he must enter into his hopes of heaven 
and pardon, shall find but an ill account, when his execu¬ 
tors complain he died poor. Think on this. To this pur¬ 
pose, wise and pious was the counsel of Salvian: “ Let 
a dying man, who hath nothing else,of which he may make 
an effective oblation, offer up to God of his substance ; let 
him offer it with compunction and tears, with grief and 
mourning, as knowing that all our oblations have their 
value, not by the price, but by the affection ; and it is our faith 
that commendeth the money, since God receives the money 
by the hands of the poor, but at the same time gives, and 
does not take the blessing; because he receives nothing 
but his own, and man gives that which is none of his own, 
that of which he is onlv a steward, and shall be accountable 
for every shilling. Let it therefore be offered humbly, as 
a creditor pays his debts : not magnifically, as a prince 
gives a donative ; and let him remember that such doles 
do not pay for the sin, but they ease the punishment; they 
are not proper instruments of redemption, but instances of 
supplication, and advantages of prayer; and when we have 
done well, remember that we have not paid our debt, but 
shown our willingness to give a little of the vast sum we 
owe; and he that gives plentifully according to the mea¬ 
sure of his estate, is still behind-hand according to the 
measure of his sins. Let him pray to God that this late obla¬ 
tion may be accepted ; and so it will, if it sails to him in a sea 
of penitential tears or sorrows that it is so little, and that it 
is so late.” 

6. Let the sick man’s charity be so ordered, that it may 
not come only to deck the funeral and make up the pomp ; 
charity waiting like one of the solemn mourners; but let 
it be continued, that, besides the alms of health and sick 
o 2 2 r 2 


162 


THE PRACTICE OF CHARITY 


ness, there may be a rejoicing in God for his charity long 
after his funerals, so as to become more beneficial and less 
public; that the poor may pray in private, and give God 
thanks many days together. This is matter of prudence, 
and yet in this we are to observe the same regards, which 
we had in the charity and alms of our lives; with this only 
difference, that, in the funeral alms also of rich and able 
persons, the public customs of the church are to be observ 
ed and decency and solemnity, and the expectations of the 
poor, and matter of public opinion, and the reputation of 
religion ; in all other cases, let thy charity consult with hu¬ 
mility and prudence, that it never minister at all to vanity, 
but be as full of advantage and usefulness as it may. 

7. Every man will forgive a dying person ; and therefore 
let the sick man be ready and sure, if he can, to send to 
such persons, whom he hath injured, and beg their pardon, 
and do them right; for, in his case, he cannot stay for 
an opportunity of convenient and advantageous recon¬ 
cilement ; he cannot then spin out a treaty, nor beat down 
the price of composition, nor lay a snare to be quit from 
the obligation and coercion of laws; but he must ask for¬ 
giveness downright, and make him amends as he can, 
being greedy of making use of this opportunity of doing a 
duty, that must be done, but cannot any more, if not now, 
until time returns again, and tells the minutes backwards, 
so that yesterday shall be reckoned in the portions of the 
future. 

8. In the intervals of sharper pains, when the sick man 
amasses together all the arguments of comfort and testimo¬ 
nies of God’s love to him, and care of him, he must needs 
find infinite matter of thanksgiving and glorification of God; 
md it is a proper act of charity and love to God, and jus- 
ice too, that he do honour to God on his death-bed for 
ill the blessings of his life, not only in general communi¬ 
cations, but those by which he hath been separate and dis¬ 
cerned from others, or supported and blessed in his own 
oerson: such as are, “ In all my life-time I never broke a 
bone; I never fell into the hands of robbers, never into 
public shame, or into noisome diseases; I have not begged 
my bread, nor been tempted by great and unequal for¬ 
tunes ; God gave me a good understanding, good friends, 
or delivered me in such a danger; and heard my prayers 
in such particular pressures of my spirit.” This or the 


AND JUSTICE IN SICKNESS. 


165 


# S 

like enumeration and consequent acts of thanksgiving 1 are 
apt to produce love to God, and confidence in the day of 
trial; for he that gave me blessings in proportion to the 
state and capacities of my life, I hope also will do so in 
proportion to the needs of my sickness and my death-bed. 
This we find practised, as a most reasonable piece of piety, 
by the wisest of the heathens. So Antipater Tarsenis 
gave God thanks for his prosperous voyage into Greece; 
and Cyrus made a handsome prayer upon the tops of the 
mountains, when by a fantasm he was warned of his ap¬ 
proaching death. “ Receive, O God my father, these holy 
rites, by which I put an end to many and great affairs, 
and I give thee thanks for thy celestial signs and prophetic 
notices, whereby thou hast signified to me what I ought 
to do, and what I ought not. I present also very great 
thanks that I have received and acknowledged your care 
of me, and I have never exalted myself above my condition 
for any prosperous accident. And I pray that you will 
grant felicity to my wife, my children, and friends, and to 
me a death such as my life hath been.” But that of Phi- 
lagrius, in Gregory Nazianzen, is eucharistical, but it re¬ 
lates more especially to the blessings and advantages which 
are accidentally consequent to sickness. “ I thank thee, 
O Father, and maker of all thy children, that thou art 
pleased to bless and to sanctify us even against our wills, 
and by the outward man purgest the inward, and leadest 
us through cross-ways to a blessed ending, for reasons best 
known unto thee.” However, when we go from our hos¬ 
pital and place of little intermedial rest in our journey to 
heaven, it is fit that we give thanks to the Major-domo for 
our entertainment. When these parts of religion are 
finished, according to each man’s necessity, there is no¬ 
thing remaining of personal duty to be done alone, but 
that the sick man act over these virtues by the renewings 
of devotion, and in the way of prayer; and that is to be 
continued as long as life, and voice, and reason, dwell 
with us. 

SECTION X. 

Acts of Charity , by way of prayer and Ejaculation ; which 
may also be used for Thanksgiving, in case of Recovery, 
O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my 
Lord ; my goodness extendeth not to thee ; but to the 


164 


THE PRACTICE OF CHARITY 


saints, that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom 
is all my delight. The Lord is the portion of my inherit* 
ance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. Psal. xvi. 
2, 3. 5. 

As for God, his way is perfect: the way of the Lord is 
tried : he is a buckler to all those that trust in him. For 
who is God, except the Lord? or who is a rock, save our 
God ? It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketli 
my way perfect. Psal xviii. 30—32. 

Be not thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste 
thee to help me. Psal. xxii. 19. 

Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the 
power of the dog. Save me from the lion’s mouth : and 
thou hast heard me also from among the horns of the uni¬ 
corns. Ver. 20, 21. 

I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst 
of the congregation will I praise thee. Ver. 22. 

Ye that fear the Lord, praise the Lord: ye sons of God, 
glorify him, and fear before him, all ye sons of men. For 
he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the af¬ 
flicted, neither hath he hid his face from him; but when 
he cried unto him, he heard. Ver. 23, 24. 

As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so longeth 
my soul after thee, O God. Psal. xlii. 1. 

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when 
shall I come and appear before the Lord ? Ver. 2. 

O my God, my soul is cast down within me. All thy 
waves and billows are gone over me. As with a sword in 
my bones I am reproached. Yet the Lord will command 
his loving kindness in the day time; and in the night his 
song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my 
life. Ver. 6—8.10. 

Bless ye the Lord in the congregations; even the Lord 
from the fountains of Israel. Psal. ixvii. 25. 

My mouth shall show forth thy righteousness and thy 
salvation all the day ; for I know not the numbers thereof. 
Psal. lxxi. 15. 

I will go in the strength of the Lord God : I will make 
mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only. O God, 
thou hast taught me from my youth; and hitherto have 1 
declared thy wondrous works. But I will hope continually, 
and will yet praise thee more and more. Ver. 16, 17. 14. 

Thy righteousness, O God, is very high, who hast done 


AND JUSTICE IN SICKNESS. 


165 

great things. O God, who is like unto thee ? Thou which 
hast showed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me 
again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the 
earth. Ver. 19, 29. 

Thou shalt increase thy goodness towards me, and com¬ 
fort me on every side. Ver. 21. 

My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto thee : and 
my soul, which thou hast redeemed. Blessed be the Lord 
God, the God of Israel, who only doth wondrous things, 
And blessed be his glorious name for ever; and let the 
whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen. Amen. Ver. 23. 
Psal. Ixxii. 18, 19. 

I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my 
supplication. The sorrows of death compassed me: I 
found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name 
of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gra¬ 
cious is the Lord and righteous; yea, our God is merciful. 
Psal. cxvi. 1. 3—5. 

The Lord preserveth the simple ; I was brought low, and 
he helped me. Return to thy rest, O my soul: the Lord 
hath dealt bountifully with me. For thou hast delivered 
my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from 
failing. Ver. 6—8. 

Precious in the sight of the Lord, is the death of his 
saints. O Lord, truly I am thy servant: I am thy servant, 
and the son of thine handmaid ; thou shalt loose my bonds. 
Ver. 15, 16. 

He that loveth not the Lord Jesus, let him be accursed. 
1 Cor. xvi. 22. 

O that I might love thee as well as ever any creature 
loved thee! He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God. 
There is no fear in love. 1 John iv. 16, 18. 

The Prayer . 

O most gracious and eternal God and loving Father, 
who hast poured out thy bowels upon us, and sent the Son 
of thy love unto us to die for love, and to make us dwell 
in love, and the eternal comprehensions of thy Divine 
mercies; O be pleased to inflame my heart with a holy 
charity towards thee and all the world. Lord, I forgive all 
that ever have offended me, and beg, that both they and I 
may enter into the possession of thy mercies, and feel a 
gracious pardon from the same fountain of grace ; and do 


166 


THE MANNER OF VISITATION 


thou forgive me all the acts of scandal, whereby I have 
provoked, or tempted, or lessened, or disturbed any person. 
Lord, let me never have any portion amongst those that di¬ 
vide the union, and disturb the peace, and break the chari¬ 
ties of the church, and Christian communion. And though 
[ am fallen into evil times in which Christendom is divided 
by the names of an evil division; yet I am in charity with 
all Christians, with all that love the Lord Jesus, and long 
for his coming, and I would give my life to save the soul 
of any of my brethren; and I humbly beg of thee, that 
the public calamity of the several societies of the church 
may not be imputed to my soul, to any evil purposes. 

II. 

Lord, preserve me in the unity of thy holy church, in the 
love of God and of my neighbours. Let thy grace enlarge 
my heart to remember, deeply to resent, faithfully to use, 
wisely to improve, and humbly to give thanks to thee for 
all thy favours, with which thou hast enriched my soul, and 
supported my estate, and preserved my person, and rescued 
me from danger, and invited me to goodness in all the days 
and periods of my life. Thou hast led me through it with 
an excellent conduct; and I have gone astray after the man¬ 
ner of men ; but my heart is towards thee. O do unto thy 
servant, as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name ; 
let thy truth comfort me ; thy mercy deliver me ; thy staff 
support me ; thy grace sanctify my sorrow; and thy good¬ 
ness pardon all my sins ; thy angels guide me with safety 
in this shadow of death, and thy most Holy Spirit lead me 
into the land of righteousness, for thy name’s sake, which 
is so comfortable, and for Jesus Christ’s sake, our dearest 
Lord and most gracious Saviour. Amen. 

CHAPTER Y. 

OF VISITATION OF THE SICK : OR, THE ASSISTANCE THAT 
IS TO BE DONE TO DYING PERSONS BY THE MINISTRY 
OF THEIR CLERGY GUIDES. 

SECTION I. 

God, who hath made no new covenant with dying persons 
distinct from the covenant of the living, hath also appointed 
no distinct sacraments for them, no other manner of usages 
but such as are common to all the spiritual necessities of 
living and healthful persons. In all the days of our reli- 


OF SICK PERSONS. 


167 

gion,from our baptism to the resignation and delivery of 
our soul, God hath appointed his servants to minister to 
the necessities, and eternally to bless, and prudently to 
guide, and wisely to judge concerning souls; and the Holy 
Ghost, that anointing from above, descends upon us in 
several effluxes, but ever by the ministries of the church. 
Our heads are anointed with that sacred unction, baptism 
(not in ceremony, but in real and proper effect,) our fore¬ 
heads in confirmation, our hands in ordinations, all our 
senses in the visitation of the sick ; and all by the ministry 
of especially-deputed and instructed persons : and we, who 
all our lifetime derive blessings from the fountains of grace, 
by the channels of ecclesiastical ministries, must do it 
then especially, when our needs are most pungent and 
actual. 1. We cannot give up our names to Christ, but 
the holy man, that ministers in religion, must enrol them, 
and present the persons, and consign the grace ; when 
we beg for God’s Spirit, the minister can best present our 
prayers, and by his advocation hallow our private de¬ 
sires, and turn them into public and potent offices. 2. If 
we desire to be established and confirmed in the grace and 
religion of our baptism, the holy man, whose hands were 
anointed by a special ordination to that and its symbolical 
purposes, lays his hands upon the catechumen, and the 
anointing from above descends by that ministry. 3. If 
we would eat the body and drink the blood of our Lord, 
we must address ourselves to the Lord’s table, and he that 
stands there to bless and to minister, can reach it forth, 
and feed thy soul ; and without his ministry thou canst not 
be nourished with that heavenly feast, nor thy body con¬ 
signed to immortality, nor thy soul refreshed with the sa¬ 
cramental bread from heaven, except by spiritual supple- 
tories, in cases of necessity and an impossible communion. 
4. If we have committed sins, the spiritual man is ap¬ 
pointed to restore us, and to pray for us, and to receive 
our confessions, and to inquire into our wounds, and to in¬ 
fuse oil and remedy, and to pronounce pardon. 5. If we 
be cut off from the communion of the faithful by our own 
demerits, their holy hands must reconcile us and give 
us peace; they are our appointed comforters, our instruc¬ 
tors, our ordinary judges; and in the whole, what the 
children of Israel begged of Moses,* that God would 

* Exod. xx. 19. 


168 


1'HE MANNER OF VISITATION 


no more speak to them alone, but by his servant Moses., 
lest they should be consumed; God, in compliance with 
our infirmities, hath of his own goodness established as a 
perpetual law in all ages of Christianity, that God will 
speak to us by his ministers, and our solemn prayers shall 
be made to him by their advocation, and his blessings de¬ 
scend from heaven by their hands, and our offices return 
thither by their presidencies, and our repentance shall be 
managed by them, and our pardon in many degrees minis¬ 
tered by them ; God comforts us by their sermons, and 
reproves us by their discipline, and cuts off some by their 
severity, and reconciles others by their gentleness, and re¬ 
lieves us by their prayers, and instructs us by their dis¬ 
courses, and heals our sicknesses by their intercession pre¬ 
sented to God, and united to Christ’s advocation; and in 
all this they are no causes, but servants of the will of 
God, instruments of the Divine grace and order, stewards 
and dispensers of the mysteries, and appointed to our souls 
to serve and lead, and to help in all accidents, dangers, and 
necessities. 

And they, who received us in our baptism, are also to 
carry us to our grave, and to take care, that our end be, as 
our life was, or should have been ; and therefore it is esta¬ 
blished as an apostolical rule, “ Is any man sick among 
you ? let him send for the elders of the church, and let 
them pray over him.”* &c. 

The sum of the duties and offices, respectively implied 
in these words, is in the following rules. 

SECTION II. 

Rules for the manner of Visitation of Sick Persons . 

1. Let the minister of religion be sent to not only against 
the agony of death, but be advised with in the whole con¬ 
duct of the sickness : for in sickness indefinitely, and there¬ 
fore in every sickness, and therefore in such which are not 
mortal, which end in health, which have no agony, or final 
temptations, St. James gives the advice; and the sick man, 
being bound to require them, is also tied to do it, when he 
can know them, and his own necessity. It is a very great 
evil, both in the matter of prudence and piety, that they 
fear the priest, as they fear the embalmer or the sexton’s 
spade ; and love not to converse with him, unless they can 

* James v. 14. 


OF SICK PERSONS. 


169 

converse with no man else ; and think his office so much to 
relate to the other world, that he is not to be treated with, 
while we hope to live in this: and indeed, that our religion 
be taken care of only when we die : and the event is this 
(of which I have seen some sad experience,) that the man 
is deadly sick, and his reason is useless, and he is laid to 
sleep, and his life is in the confines of the grave, so that he 
can do nothing towards the trimming of his lamp ; and the 
curate shall say a few prayers by him, and talk to a dead 
man, and the man is not in a condition to be helped, but in 
a condition to need it hugely. He cannot, be called upon 
to confess his sins, and he is not able to remember them ; 
and he cannot understand an advice, nor hear a free dis¬ 
course, nor be altered from a passion, nor cured of his 
fear, nor comforted upon any grounds of reason or religion, 
and no man can tell what is likely to be his fate; or if he 
does, he cannot prophesy good things concerning him, but 
evil. Let the spiritual man come when the sick man can 
be conversed withal and instructed, when he can take 
medicine, and amend, when he understands, or can be 
taught to understand the case of his soul, and the rules of 
his conscience : and then his advice may turn into advan¬ 
tage : it cannot otherwise be useful. 

2. The intercourses of the minister with the sick man 
have so much variety in them, that they are not to be trans¬ 
acted at once : and therefore they do not well, that send 
once to see the good man with sorrow, and hear him pray, 
and thank him, and dismiss him civilly, and desire to see 
his face no more. To dress a soul for funeral, is not a 
work to be despatched at one meeting: at first he needs 
a comfort, and anon something to make him willing to die ; 
and by and by he is tempted to impatience, and that needs 
a special cure ; and it is a great work to make his confes¬ 
sions well and with advantages; and it may be the man is 
careless and indifferent, and then he needs to understand 
the evil of his sin, and the danger of his person ; and his 
cases of conscience may be so many and so intricate, that 
he is not quickly to be reduced to peace, and one time the 
holy man must pray, and another he must exhort, a third 
time administer the holy sacrament; and he that ought to 
watch all the periods and little portions of his life, lest he 
should be surprised and overcome, had need be watched 
when he is sick, and assisted, and called upon, and re- 
V 2 S 


170 


THE MANNER OF VISITATION 


minded of the several parts of his duty, in every instant of 
his temptation. This article was well provided for among 
the Easterlings ; for the priests in their visitations of a sick 
person did abide in their attendance and ministry for seven 
days together. The want of this makes the visitations 
fruitless, and the calling of the clergy contemptible, while 
it is not suffered to imprint its proper effects upon them 
that need it in a lasting ministry. 

3. St. James advises, that when a man is sick, he should 
send for the elders one sick man for many presbyters, 
and so did the eastern churches ; they sent for seven, and 
like a college of physicians, they ministered spiritual reme¬ 
dies, and sent up prayers like a choir of singingclerks. In 
cities they might do so, while the Christians were few, and 
the priests many. But when they that dwelt in the Pagi 
or villages ceased to be Pagans, and were baptized, it grew 
to be an impossible felicity, unless in few cases, and to 
some more eminent persons: but because they need it 
most, God hath taken care, that they may best have it; 
and they that can, are not very prudent, if they neglect it. 

4. Whether they be many or few, that are sent to the 
sick person, let the curate of his parish, or his own confes¬ 
sor, be amongst them; that is, let him not be wholly ad¬ 
vised by strangers, who know not his particular necessi¬ 
ties ; but he that is the ordinary judge cannot safely be 
passed by in his extraordinary necessity, which, in so great 
portions, depends upon his whole life past: and it is a 
matter of suspicion, when we decline his judgment, that 
knows us best, and with whom we formerly did converse, 
either by choice or by law, by private election or by public 
constitution. It concerns us then to make severe and pro¬ 
fitable judgments, and not to conspire against ourselves, 
or procure such assistances, which may handle us softly, 
or comply with our weakness more than relieve our ne¬ 
cessities. 

5. When the ministers of religion are come, first let them 
do their ordinary offices, that is, pray for grace to the sick 
man, for patience, for resignation, for health, (if it seems 
good to God in order to his great end.) For that is one 
of the ends of the advice of the apostle. And therefore the 
minister is to be sent for, not when the case is desperate, 
but before the sickness is come to its crisis or period. Le* 

* James v. 14. 


OF SICK PERSONS. 


171 

him discourse concerning the causes of sickness, and by a 
general instrument move him to consider concerning his 
condition. Let him call upon him to set his soul in order; 
to trim his lamp ; to dress his soul; to renew acts of grace 
by waj of prayer ; to make amends in all the evils he hath 
done ; and to supply all the defects of duty, as much as his 
past condition requires, and his present can admit. 

6. According as the condition of sickness or the weakness 
of the man is observed, so the exhortation is to be less, and 
the prayers more, because the life of the man was his main 
preparatory ; and therefore, if his condition be full of pain 
and infirmity, the shortness and small number of its own 
acts is to be supplied by the acts of the ministers and 
standers-by, who are, in such case, to speak more to God 
for him than to talk to him. For the prayer of the righ¬ 
teous,^ when it is fervent, hath a promise to prevail much 
in behalf of the sick person. But exhortations must prevail 
with their own proper weight, not by the passion of the 
speaker. But yet this assistance by way of prayers is not 
to be done by long offices, but by frequent, and fervent, 
and holy : in which offices if the sick man joins, let them 
be short, and apt to comply with his little strength and great 
infirmities; if they be said in his behalf without his con¬ 
junction, they that pray, may prudently use their own liberty 
and take no measures, but their own devotions and oppor¬ 
tunities, and the sick man’s necessities. 

When he hath made this general address and preparatory 
entrance to the work of many days and periods, he may de¬ 
scend to particulars by the following instruments and dis¬ 
courses. 

SECTION III. 

Of ministering in the Sick Man's Confession of Sins 

and Repentance . 

The first necessity, that is to be served, is that of repent¬ 
ance, in which the ministers can in no way serve him, but 
by first exhorting him to confession of his sins, and decla¬ 
ration of the state of his soul. For unless they know the 
manner of his life, and the degrees of his restitution, either 
they can do nothing at all, or nothing of advantage and 
certainty. His discourses, like Jonathan’s arrows, may 
shoot short, or shoot over, but not wound where they 

* James v. 16. 


172 


OF MINISTERING AT THE SICK MAN’S 


should, nor open those humours that need a lancet or a 
cautery. To this purpose the sick man may be reminded, 

Arguments and Exhortations to move the Sick Man to 

Confession of Sins. 

1. That God hath made a special promise to confession 
of sins. “ He that confesseth his sins, and forsaketh them, 
shall have mercy and, “ If we confess our sins, God is 
righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all 
unrighteousness.”! 2. That confession of sins is a proper 
act and introduction to repentance. 3. That when the 
Jews, being warned by the sermons of the Baptist, repented 
of their sins, they confessed their sins to John in the sus- 
ception of baptism*! 4. That the converts, in the days of 
the apostles, returning to Christianity, instantly declared 
their faith and their repentance, by confession and decla¬ 
ration of their deeds,§ which they then renounced, abjured, 
and confessed to the apostles. 5. That confession is an 
act of many virtues together. 6. It is the gate of repent¬ 
ance ; 7. An instrument of shame and condemnation of our 
sins ; 8. A glorification of God, so called by Joshua, par¬ 
ticularly in the case of Achan; 9. An acknowledgment, 
that God is just in punishing; for, by confessing of our 
sins, we also confess his justice, and are assessors with 
God in this condemnation of ourselves. 10. That by such 
an act of judging ourselves, we escape the more angry 
judgment of God: St. Paul expressly exhorting us to it, 
upon that very inducement.|| 11. That confession of sins 
is so necessary a duty, that in all Scriptures, it is the im¬ 
mediate preface to pardon, and the certain consequent of 
godly sorrow, and an integral or constituent part of that 
grace, which together with faith, makes up the whole duty 
of the gospel. 12. That in all ages of the gospel, it hath 
been taught and practised respectively, that all the peni¬ 
tents made confessions proportionable to their repentance, 
that is, public or private, general or particular. 13. That 
God by testimonies from heaven, that is, by his word, and 
by a consequent rare peace of conscience, hath given ap¬ 
probation to this holy duty. 14. That by this instrument, 
those, whose office it is to apply remedies to every spirit¬ 
ual sickness, can best perform their offices. 15. That it 

* Prov. xxviii. 13. t 1 John i. 9. J Matt. iii. 6 $ Acts xix. 18. 

II 1 Cor. xi. 31. 


CONFESSION OF SINS. 


173 

is by all churches esteemed a duty necessary to be done 
ir> cases of a troubled conscience. 16. That what is ne¬ 
cessary to be done in one case, and convenient in all cases, 
is fit to be done by all persons. 17. That, without con¬ 
fession, it cannot easily be judged concerning the sick per¬ 
son, whether his conscience ought to be troubled or no, 
and therefore it cannot be certain that it is not necessary 
18. That there can be no reason against it, but such as 
consults with flesh and blood, with infirmity and sin, tc 
all which confession of sins is a direct enemy. 19. That 
now is that time, when all the imperfections of his repent¬ 
ance and all the breaches of his duty are to be rrfade up, 
and that, if he omits this opportunity, he can never be ad¬ 
mitted to a salutary and medicinal confession. 20. That 
St. James gives an express precept, that we Christians 
should confess our sins to each other, that is, Christian to 
Christian, brother to brother, the people to their minister; 
and then he makes a specification of that duty, which a sick 
man is to do, when he hath sent for the elders of the church. 

21. That in all this there is no force lies upon him; but 
“ if he hides his sins, he shall not be directed,” so said the 
wise man; but ere long he must appear before the great 
Judge of men and angels : and his spirit will be more 
amazed and confounded to be seen among the angels of 
light with the shadows of the works of darkness upon him, 
than he can suffer by confessing to God in the presence of 
him, whom God hath sent to heal him. However, it is 
better to be ashamed here, than to be confounded here¬ 
after. “ Pol pudere prsestat quam pigere, totidem literis.” 

22. That confession, being in order to pardon of sins, it is 
very proper and analogical to the nature of the thing, that 
it be made there, where the pardon of sins is to be admi¬ 
nistered : and that, of pardon of sins God hath made the 
minister the publisher and dispenser: and all this is be¬ 
sides the accidental advantages, which accrue to the con¬ 
science, which is made ashamed, and timorous, and re¬ 
strained by the mortifications and blushings of discovering 
to a man the faults committed in secret. 23. That the 
ministers of the gospel are the ministers of reconciliation, 
are commanded to restore such persons a snare overtaken 
in a fault; and to that purpose they come to offer their mi¬ 
nistry, if they may have cognizance of the fault and per¬ 
son. 24. That, in the matter of prudence, it is not safe to 

p 2 s 2 


OF VISITING AT THE SICK MaN’S 


174 

trust a man’s self in the final condition and last security of 
a man’s soul, a man being no good judge in his own case 
And when a duty is so useful in all cases, so necessary in 
some, and encouraged by promises evangelical, by Scrip¬ 
ture precedents, by the example of both Testaments, and 
prescribed by injunctions apostolical, and by the canon of all 
churches, and the example of all ages, and taught us even 
by the proportions of duty, and the analogy to the power 
ministerial, and the very necessities of every man ; he that 
for stubbornness, or sinful shamefacedness, or prejudice, 
or any other criminal weakness, shall decline to do it in the 
days of his danger, when the vanities of the world are worn 
off, and all affections to sin are wearied, and the sin itself 
is pungent and grievous, and that we are certain we shall 
not escape shame for them hereafter, unless we be ashamed 
of them here, and use all the proper instruments of their 
pardon ; this man, I say, is very near death, but very far 
off from the kingdom of heaven. 

2. The spiritual man will find in the conduct of this duty 
many cases and varieties of accidents, which will alter his 
course and forms of proceedings. Most men are of a rude 
indifferency, apt to excuse themselves, ignorant of their 
condition, abused by evil principles, content with a gene¬ 
ral and indefinite confession ; and if you provoke them to 
it by the foregoing considerations, lest their spirits should 
be a little uneasy, or not secured in their own opinions, 
will be apt to say, “ They are sinners, as every man hath 
his infirmity, and he as well as any man : but, God be 
thanked, they bear no ill will to any man, or are no adulterers, 
or no rebels, or they have fought on the right side; and 
God be merciful to them, for they are sinners.” But you 
shall hardly open their breasts farther : and to inquire be¬ 
yond this, would be to do the office of an accuser. 

3. But, which is yet worse, there are very many persons, 
who have been used to an habitual course of a constant 
intemperance, or dissolution in any other instance, that the 
crime is made natural and necessary, and the conscience 
hath digested all the trouble, and the man thinks himself in 
a good estate, and never reckons any sins, but those which 
are the egression and passings beyond his ordinary and 
daily drunkenness. This happens in the cases of drunken¬ 
ness, and intemperate eating, and idleness, and uncharita- 
pleness, and in lying and vain jestings, and particularly in 


CONFESSION OF SINS. 


175 


such evils, which the laws do not punish, and pirblic cus¬ 
toms do not shame, but which are countenanced by potent 
sinners, or evil customs, or good nature, and mistaken ci¬ 
vilities. 

,v, 

Instruments by tray of Consideration , to awaken a careless 
Person , and a stupid Conscience. 

In these and the like cases, the spiritual man must 
awaken the lethargy, and prick the conscience, by repre¬ 
senting to him, 1. That Christianity is a holy and a strict 
religion. *2. That many are called, but few are chosen. 
That the number of them, that are to be saved, are but 
very few in respect of those, that are to descend into sor¬ 
row and everlasting darkness. That we have covenanted 
with God in baptism to live a holy life. That the mea¬ 
sures of holiness in Christian religion are not to be taken 
by the evil proportions of the multitude, and common fame 
of looser and less severe persons; because the multitude, 
is that which does not enter into heaven, but the few, the 
elect, the holy servants of Jesus. That every habitual sin 
does amount to a very great guilt in the whole, though it 
be but in a small instance. That if the righteous scarcely 
be saved, then there will be no place for the unrighteous 
and the sinner to appear in, but places of horror and 
amazement. That confidence hath destroyed many souls, 
and many have had a sad portion, who have reckoned 
themselves in the calender of saints. That the promises 
of heaven are so great, that it is not reasonable to think 
that every man, and every life, and an easy religion, shall 
possess such infinite glories. That although heaven is a 
gift, yet there is a great severity and strict exacting of the 
conditions on our part to receive that gift. That some 
persons who have lived strictly for forty years together, 
yet have miscarried by some one crime at last, or some 
secret hypocrisy, or a latent pride, or a creeping ambition, 
or a fantastic spirit; and therefore much less can they 
hope to receive so great portions of felicities, when their 
life hath been a continual declination from those severities 
which might have created confidence of pardon and ac¬ 
ceptation, through the mercies of God and the merits of 
Jesus. That every good man ought to be suspicious of 
himself, and in his judgment concerning his own condi¬ 
tion, to. fear the worst, that he may provide for the better. 


MEANS OF AWAKENING 


176 

That we are commanded to work out our salvation with 
fear and trembling. That this precept was given with 
very great reason, considering the thousand thousand 
ways of miscarrying. That St. Paul himself, and St. Ar- 
senius, and St. Elzearius, and divers other remarkable 
saints, had, at some times, great apprehensions of the dan¬ 
gers of failing of the mighty price of their high calling 
That the stake that is to be secured, is of so great an in¬ 
terest, that all our industry, and all the violences we can 
suffer in the prosecution of it, are not considerable. That 
this affair is to be done but once, and then never any more 
unto eternal ages. That they who profess themselves ser¬ 
vants of the institution, and servants of the law and disci¬ 
pline of Jesus, will find that they must judge themselves 
by the proportions of that law, by which they were to rule 
themselves. That the laws of society and civility, and the 
voices of my company, are as ill judges as they are guides ; 
but we are to stand or fall by his sentence, who will not 
consider or value the talk of idle men, or the persuasion 
of wilfully abused consciences, but of him who hath felt 
our infirmity in all things but sin, and knows where our 
failings are unavoidable, and where and in what degree, 
they are excusable ; but never will endure, a sin should 
seize upon any part of our love, and deliberate choice, or 
careless cohabitation. That if our conscience accuse us 
not,* yet are we not hereby justified; for God is greater 
than our consciences.'}* That they who are most innocent, 
have their consciences most tender and sensible. That 
scrupulous persons are always most religious ; and that 
to feel nothing, is not a sign of life, but of death. That 
nothing can be # hid from the eyes of the Lord, to whom 
the day and the night, public and private, words and 
thoughts, actions and designs, are equally discernible. 
That a lukewarm person is only secured in his own 
thoughts, but very unsafe in the event, and despised by 
God. That we live in an age, in which that which is call¬ 
ed and esteemed a holy life, in the days of the apostles 
and holy primitives would have been esteemed indif¬ 
ferent, sometimes scandalous, and alw r ays cold. That 
what was a truth of God then, is so now; and to what se¬ 
verities they were tied, for the same also we are to be ac¬ 
countable ; and heaven is not now an easier purchase than 
* 1 John iii. 20. 11 Cor. iv. 4. 


A SLEEPING CONSCIENCE. 


177 


it was then. That if he will cast up his accounts, even 
with a superficial eye, let him consider how few j/ood 
works he hath done ; how inconsiderable is the relief which 
he gave to the poor; how little are the extraordinaries of 
his religion; and how inactive and lame, how polluted and 
disordered, how unchosen and unpleasant were the ordi¬ 
nary parts and periods of it: and how many and great sins 
have stained his course of life : and until he enters into a 
particular scrutiny, let him only revolve in his mind what 
his general course hath been ; and in the way of prudence, 
let him say whether it was laudable and holy, or only in¬ 
different and excusable; and if he can think it only excu¬ 
sable, and so as to hope for pardon by such suppletories 
of faith, and arts of persuasion, which he and others used 
to take in for auxiliaries to their unreasonable confidence; 
then he cannot but think it very fit, that he search into his 
own state, and take a guide, and erect a tribunal, or ap¬ 
pear before that which Christ hath erected for him on 
earth, that he may make his access fairer, when he shall 
be called before the dreadful tribunal of Christ in the 
clouds. For if he can be confident upon the stock of an 
unpraised or a looser life, and should dare to venture upon 
wild accounts, without order, without abatements, without 
consideration, without conduct, without fear, without scru¬ 
tinies, and confessions, and instruments of amends or par¬ 
don, he either knows not his danger, or cares not for it, 
and little understands how great a horror that is, that a 
man should rest his head for ever upon a cradle of flames, 
and lie in a bed of sorrows, and never sleep, and never end 
his groans or the gnashing of his teeth. 

This is that, which some spiritual persons call a waken¬ 
ing t)f the sinner by the terrors of the law ; which is a 
good analogy or tropical expression to represent the 
threatenings of the gospel, and the dangers of an incuri¬ 
ous and a sinning person : but we have nothing else 
to do with the terrors of the law ; for, blessed be God, 
thev concern us not. The terrors of the law were the in- 
termination of curses upon all those, that ever broke any 
of the least commandments, once, or in any instance : and 
to it the righteousness of faith is opposed. The terrors of 
the law admitted no repentance, no pardon, no abatement; 
and were so severe, that God never inflicted them at all 
according to the letter, because he admitted all to repent* 


178 


OF MINISTERING AT THE SICK MAN’S 


ance that desired it with a timely prayer, unless in very 
few cases, as of Achan, or Korah, the gatherer of sticks 
upon the Sabbath day, or the like : but the state of threat- 
enings in the gospel is very fearful, because the conditions 
of avoiding them are easy and ready, and they happen to 
evil persons after many warnings, second thoughts, fre¬ 
quent invitations to pardon and repentance, and after one 
entire pardon consigned in baptism. And in this sense it 
is necessary, that such persons, as we now deal withal, 
should be instructed concerning their danger. 

4. When the sick man is either of himself, or by these 
considerations set forward with purposes of repentance, 
and confession of his sins, in order to all its holy purposes 
and effects, then the minister is to assist him in the under¬ 
standing the number of his sins, that is, the several kinds 
of them, and the various manners of prevaricating the 
Divine commandments: for as for the number of the par¬ 
ticulars in every kind, he will need less help ; and if he did, 
he can have it no where but in his own conscience, and 
from the witnesses of his conversation. Let this be done 
by prudent insinuation, by arts of remembrance, and secret 
notices, and propounding occasions and instruments of 
recalling such things to his mind, which either by public 
fame he is accused of, or by the temptations of his condi¬ 
tion, it is likely he might have contracted. 

5. If the person be truly penitent, and forward to con¬ 
fess all that are set before him or offered to his sight at a 
half face, then he may be complied withal in all his inno¬ 
cent circumstances, and his conscience made placid and 
willing, and he be drawn forward by good nature and civi¬ 
lity, that his repentance, in all the parts of it, and in every 
step of its progress and emanation, may be as voluntary 
and chosen as it can. For by that means if the sick person 
can be invited to do the work of religion, it enters by the 
door of his will and choice, and will pass on toward con¬ 
summation by the instrument of delight. 

6. If the sick man be backward and without apprehen¬ 
sion of the good-natured and civil way, let the minister 
take care, that by some way or other the work of God be 
secured ; and if he wii'l not understand, when he is secretly 
prompted, he must be hallooed to, and asked in plain in- 
terrogatives concerning the crime of his life. He must be 
told of the evil things that are spoken of him in markets 


CONFESSION OF SINS. 


179 

and exchanges, the proper temptations and accustomed 
evils of his calling and condition, of the actions of scandal; 
and in all those actions, which are public, or of which any 
notice is come abroad, let care be taken, that the right 
side of the case of conscience be turned toward him, and 
the error truly represented to him by which he was abused; 
as the injustice of his contracts, his oppressive bargains, 
his rapine and violence; and if he hath persuaded himself 
to think well of a scandalous action, let him be instructed 
and advertised of his folly and his danger. 

7. And this advice concerns the minister of religion to 
follow without partiality, or fear or interest, in much sim¬ 
plicity, and prudence, and hearty sincerity; having no 
other consideration, but that the interest of the man’s soul 
be preserved, and no caution used, but that the matter be 
represented with just circumstances, and civilities fitted to 
the person with prefaces of honour and regard ; but so 
that nothing of the duty be diminished by it, that the in¬ 
troduction do not spoil the sermon, and both together ruin 
two souls, of the speaker and the hearer. For it may soon 
be considered, if the sick man be a poor or an indifferent 
person in secular account, yet his soul is equally dear to 
God and was redeemed with the same highest price, and is 
therefore to be highly regarded ; and there is no temptation 
but that the spiritual man may speak freely without the al¬ 
lays of interest, or fear, or mistaken civilities. But if the 
sick man be a prince or a person of eminence or wealth, 
let it be remembered, it is an ill expression of reverence 
to his authority, or of regard to his person, to let him perish 
for the want of an honest, and just, and a free homily. 

8. Let the sick man, in the scrutiny of his conscience 
and confession of his sins, be carefully reminded to con¬ 
sider those sins, which are only condemned in the court 
of conscience, and no where else. For there are certain se¬ 
crecies and retirements, places of darkness and artificial 
veils, with which the devil uses to hide our sins from us, 
and to incorporate them into our affections by a constant 
uninterrupted practice, before they be prejudiced or disco¬ 
vered. 1. There are many sins, which have reputation, 
and are accounted honour; as fighting a duel, answering 
a blow with a blow, carrying armies into a neighbour- 
country, robbing with a navy, violently seizing upon a 
kingdom. 2. Others are permitted by law; as usury, in 


OF MINISTERING AT THE SICK MAN’S 


180 

all countries; and because every excess of it is a certair 
sin, the permission of so suspected a matter makes it ready 
for us, and instructs the temptation. 3. Some things are 
not forbidden by laws; as lying in ordinary discourse* 
jeering, scoffing, intemperate eating, ingratitude, selling 
too dear, circumventing another in contracts, importunate 
entreaties, and temptation of persons to many instances of 
sin, pride, and ambition. 4. Some others do not reckon 
they sin against God, if the laws have seized upon the 
person; and many that are imprisoned for debt, think 
themselves disobliged from payment:-and when they pay 
the penalty, think they owe nothing for the scandal and 
disobedience. 5. Some sins are thought not considerable, 
but go under the title of sins of infirmity, or inseparable 
accidents of mortality ; such as idle thoughts, foolish talk¬ 
ing, looser revellings, impatience, anger, and all the events 
of evil company. 6. Lastly, many things are thought to be 
no sins: such as mispending of their time, whole days or 
months of useless and impertinent employment, long 
gaming, winning men’s money in greater portions, censur¬ 
ing men’s actions, curiosity, equivocating in the prices and 
secrets of buying and selling, rudeness, speaking truths 
enviously, doing good to evil purposes, and the like. Under 
the dark shadow of these unhappy and fruitless yew-trees, 
the enemy of mankind makes very many to lie hid from 
themselves, sewing before their nakedness the fig-leaves of 
popular and idol reputation, and impunity, public permis¬ 
sion, a temporal penalty, infirmity, prejudice, and direct 
error in judgment, and ignorance. Now, in all these cases 
the ministers are to be inquisitive and observant, lest the 
fallacy prevail upon the penitent to evil purposes of death 
or diminution of his good ; and that those things which in 
his life passed without observation, may now be brought 
forth, and pass under saws and harrows, that is the severity 
and censure of sorrow and condemnation. 

9. To which I add, for the likeness of the thing, that 
the matter of omission be considered; for in them lies the 
bigger half of our failings; and yet, in many instances, 
they are undiscerned, because they very often sit down by 
the conscience, but never upon it; and they are usually 
looked upon as poor men do upon their not having coach 
and horses, or as that knowledge is missed by boys and 
hinds, which they never had ; it will be hard to make them 


CONFESSION OF SINS. 


181 

understand their ignorance : it requires knowledge to per¬ 
ceive it; and therefore he that can perceive it, hath it not. 
But by this pressing the conscience with omissions, I do 
not mean recession, or distances from states of eminency 
or perfection : lor although they may be used by the minis¬ 
ters as an instrument of humility, and a chastiser of too 
big a confidence; yet that, which is to be confessed and 
repented of, is omission of duty in direct instances and 
matters of commandment, or collateral and personal obliga¬ 
tions, and is especially to be considered, by kings and pre¬ 
lates, by governors and rich persons, by guides of souls, 
and presidents of learning in public charge, and by all 
others in their proportions. 

10. The ministers of religion must take care, that the 
sick man’s confession be as minute and particular as it 
can, and that as few sins as may be, be intrusted to the 
general prayer for pardon for all sins; for by being particu¬ 
lar and enumerative of the variety of evils, which have dis¬ 
ordered his life, his repentance is disposed to be more 
pungent and afflictive, and therefore more salutary and 
medicinal : it hath in it more sincerity, and makes a better 
judgment of the final condition of the man ; and from 
thence it is certain, the hopes of the sick man can be more 
confident and reasonable. 

11. The spiritual man, that assists at the repentance of 
the sick, must not be inquisitive into all the circumstances 
of the particular sins, but be content with those that are 
direct paths of the crime, and aggravations of the sorrow ; 
such as frequency, long abode, and earnest choice in acting 
them; violent desires, great expense, scandal of others; 
dishonour to the religion, days of devotion, religious so¬ 
lemnities and holy places ; and the degrees of boldness 
and impudence, perfect resolution, and the habit. If the 
sick person be reminded or inquired into concerning these, 
it may prove a good instrument to increase his contrition, 
and perfect his penitential sorrows, and facilitate his abso¬ 
lution, and the means of his amendment. But the other 
circumstances, as of the relative person in the participation 
of the crime, the measures or circumstances of the impure 
action, the name of the injured man or woman, the quality 
or accidental condition : these and all the like are but 
questions springing from curiosity, and producing scruple, 
and apt to turn into many inconveniences. 

a 2 T 


182 


OF MINIS fERING AT THE SICK MAN’S 


12. The minister, in this duty of repentance, must be 
diligent to observe concerning the person that repents, that 
he be not imposed upon by some one excellent thing, that 
was remarkable in the sick man’s forfiier life. For there 
are some people of one good thing. Some are charitable 
to the poor out of kind-heartedness, and the same good 
nature makes them easy and compliant with drinking per¬ 
sons, and they die with drink, but cannot live with charity : 
and their alms, it may be, shall deck their monument, or 
give them the reward of loving persons, and the poor man’s 
thanks for alms, and procure many temporal blessings: 
but it is very sad, that the reward should be all spent in 
this world. Some are rarely just persons, and punctual 
observers of their word with men, but break their promises 
with God, and make no scruple of that. In these and all 
the like cases, the spiritual man must be careful to remark, 
that good proceeds from an entire and integral cause, and 
evil from every part: that one sickness can make a man 
die; but he cannot live and be called a sound man, with¬ 
out an entire health; and therefore, if any confidence 
arises upon that stock, so as that it hinders the strictness 
of the repentance, it must be allayed with the represent¬ 
ment of this sad truth, “ that he who reserves one evil in 
his choice, hath chosen an evil portion, and coloquintida 
and death is in the potand he that worships the God 
of Israel with a frequent sacrifice, and yet upon the anni¬ 
versary will bow in the house of Venus, and loves to see 
the follies and the nakedness of Rimmon, may eat part of 
the flesh of the sacrifice, and fill his belly, but shall not be 
refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the altar, or the 
dew of heaven descending upon the mysteries. 

13. And yet the minister is to estimate, that one, or more 
good things, is to be an ingredient into his judgment con¬ 
cerning the state of his soul, and the capacities of his resti¬ 
tution, and admission to the peace of the church : and ac¬ 
cording as the excellency and usefulness of the grace hath 
been, and according to the degrees and the reasons of its 
prosecution, so abatements are to be made in the injunc¬ 
tions and impositions upon the penitent. For every virtue 
is one degree of approach to God ; and though, in respect 
of the acceptation, it is equally none at all, that is, it is as 
certain a death if a man dies with one mortal wouynd, as if 
he had twenty ; yet in such persons, who have some one 




CONFESSION OF SINS. 


183 

ar more excellencies, though not an entire piety, there is 
naturally a nearer approach to the state of grace, than in 
persons, who have done evils, and are eminent for nothing 
that is good. But in making judgment of such persons, it 
is to be inquired into, and noted accordingly, why the sick 
person was so eminent in that one good thing; whether 
by choice and apprehension of his duty, or whether it was 
a virtue from which his state of life ministered nothing to 
dehort or discourage him, or whether it was only a conse¬ 
quent of his natural temper and constitution. If the first, 
then it supposes him in the neigbourhood of the state of 
grace, and that in other things he was strongly tempted. 
The second is a felicity of his education, and an effect of 
Providence. The third is a felicity of his nature, and a 
gift of God in order to spiritual purposes. But yet of 
every one of these, advantage is to be made. If the con¬ 
science of his duty was the principal, then he is ready 
formed to entertain all other graces upon the same reason, 
and his repentance must be made more sharp and penal; 
because he is convinced to have done against his conscience 
in all the other parts of his life ; but the judgment concern¬ 
ing his final state ought to be more gentle, because it was 
a huge temptation that hindered the man, and abused his 
infirmity. But if either his calling or his nature were the 
parents of the grace, he is in the state of a moral man (in 
the just and proper meaning of the word,) and to be hand¬ 
led accordingly : that virtue disposed him rarely well to 
many other good things, but was no part of the grace of • 
sanctification ; and therefore the man’s repentance is to 
begin anew, for all that, and is to be finished in the returns 
of health, if God grants it ; but if he denies it, it is much, 
very much the worse for all that sweet-natured virtue. 

14. When the confession is made, the spiritual man is to 
execute the office of a restorer and a judge, in the following 
particulars and manner. 

SECTION IV. 

Of the ministering to the Restitution and Pardon , or Recon¬ 
ciliation of the Sick Person , hy administering the holy 
Sacrament. 

“ If any man be overtaken in a fault, ye, which are spi¬ 
ritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness that 

* Gal. vi. 1. 


l84 


OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING 


is the commission : and, “ Let the elders of the church 
pray over the sick man; and, if he have committed sins, 
they shall be forgiven him that is the effect of his power 
and his ministry. But concerning this, some few things 
are to be considered. 

1. It is the office of the presbyters and ministers of re¬ 
ligion to declare public criminals and scandalous persons 
to be such, that, when the leprosy is declared, the flock 
may avoid the infection ; and then the man is excommuni¬ 
cate, when the people are warned to avoid the danger of 
the man, or the reproach of the crime, to withdraw from 
his society, and not to bid him God speed, not to eat and 
celebrate synaxes and church-meetings with such who are 
declared criminal and dangerous. And therefore excom¬ 
munication is, in a very great part, the act of the congre¬ 
gation and communities of the faithful : and St. Paul said 
to the church of the Corinthians,"]' that they had inflicted 
the evil upon the incestuous person, that is, by excommu¬ 
nicating him : all the acts of which are, as they are sub¬ 
jected in the people, acts of caution and liberty : but no 
more acts of direct, proper power or jurisdiction, than it 
was, when the scholars of Simon Magus left his chair, and 
went to hear St. Peter : but as they are actions of the rulers 
of the church, so they are declarative, ministerial, and 
effective too by moral casualty, that is, by persuasion and 
discourse, by argument and prayer, by homily and material 
representment, by reasonableness of order, and the super¬ 
induced necessities of men ; though not by any real change 
of state as to the person, nor by diminution of his right, 
or violence to his condition. 

2. He that baptizes, and he that ministers the holy sa¬ 
crament, or he that prays, does holy offices of great ad¬ 
vantage ; but in these also, just as in the former, he exer 
cises no jurisdiction or pre-eminence after the manner of 
secular authority; and the same is also true, if he should 
deny them. He that refuseth to baptize an indisposed 
person, hath, by the consent of all men, no power or 
jurisdiction over the unbaptized man : and he, that, for 
the like reason, refuseth to give him the communion, pre¬ 
serves the sacredness of the mysteries, and does charity 
to the undisposed man, to deny that to him, which will do 
him mischief; and this is an act of separation, just as it is 

* James v. 14,15. t 1 Cor. v. 5. 12, 13. 2 Cor. ii. 6. 


the sick penitejnt. 


185 

Coy a friend or physician to deny water to an hydropic per¬ 
son, or Italian wines to a hectic fever ; or as if Cato should 
deny to salute Bibulus, or the censor of manners to do 
countenance to a wanton and vicious person. And though 
this thing was expressed by words of power, such as sepa¬ 
ration, abstention, excommunication, deposition ; yet these 
words we understand by the thing itself, which was noto¬ 
rious and evident to be matter of prudence, security, and 
a lree, unconstrained discipline : and they passed into power 
by consent and voluntary submission ; having the same 
effect of constraint, fear, and authority, which we see in 
secular jurisdiction ; not because ecclesiastical discipline 
hath a natural proper coercion as lay-tribunals have, but 
because men have submitted to it, and are bound to do so 
upon the interest of two or three Christian graces. 

3. In pursuance of this caution and provision, the church 
superinduced times and manners of abstention, and ex¬ 
pressions of sorrow, and canonical punishments, which they 
tied the delinquent people to suffer, before they would 
admit them to the holy table of the Lord. For the criminal 
having obliged himself by his sin, and the church having 
declared it, when she could take notice of it, he is bound 
to repent, to make him capable of pardon with God ; and 
to prove that he is penitent, he is todo such actions, which 
the church, in the virtue and pursuance of repentance, shall 
accept as a testimony of it, sufficient to inform her : for as she 
could not bind at all (in this sense) till the crime was public, 
though the man had bound himself in secret; so neither 
can she set him free, till the repentance be as public as the 
sin, or so as she can note it and approve it. Though the 
man be free, as to God, by his internal act; yet, as the 
publication of the sin was accidental to it, and the church- 
censure consequent to it, so is the publication of repent¬ 
ance and consequent absolution extrinsical to the pardon, 
but accidentally and in the present circumstances neces¬ 
sary. This was the same that the Jews did (though in 
other instances and expressions,) and do to this day to 
their prevaricating people ; and the Fissenes in their assem¬ 
blies, and private colleges of scholars, and public universi¬ 
ties. For all these being assemblies of voluntary persons, 
and such as seek for advantage, are bound to make an ar¬ 
tificial authority in their superiors, and so to secure order 
and government by their own obedience and voluntary 
a 2 2 t 2 


OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING 


186 

subordination, which is not essential and of proper juris¬ 
diction in the superior; and the band ot it, is not any 
coercive power, but the denying to communicate such 
benefits, which they seek in that communion and fel¬ 
lowship. 

4. These, I say, were introduced in the special manners 
and instances by positive authority, and have not a Divine 
authority commanding them ; but there is a Divine power, 
that verifies them, and makes these separations effectual 
and formidable: for because they are declarative and 
ministerial in the spiritual man, and suppose a delinquency 
and demerit in the other, and a sin against God, our 
blessed Saviour hath declared, that, “ what they bind on 
earth, shall be bound in heaven ;” that is, in plain signifi¬ 
cation, the same sins and sinners, which the clergy condemn 
in the face of their assemblies, the same are condemned in 
heaven before the face of God, and for the same reason too. 
God’s law hath sentenced it, and these are the preachers 
and publishers of his law, by which they stand condemned ; 
and these laws are they, that condemn the sin, or acquit 
the penitent, there and here; whatsoever they bind here, 
shall be bound there ; that is, the sentence of God at the 
day of judgment shall sentence the same men, whom the 
church does rightly sentence here. It is spoken in the 
future, it shall be bound in heaven; not that the sinner 
is first bound there, or first absolved there ; but because all 
binding and loosing in the interval is imperfect and rela¬ 
tive to the day of judgment, the day of the great sentence, 
therefore it is set down in the time to come, and says this 
only, the clergy are tied by the word and laws of God to 
condemn such sins and sinners ; and that you may not 
think it ineffective, because after such sentence the man 
lives, and grows rich, or remains in health and power; 
therefore be sure, it shall be verified in the day of judg¬ 
ment. This is hugely agreeable with the words of oui 
Lord, and certain in reason : for that the minister does no¬ 
thing to the final alteration of the state of the man’s soul 
by way of sentence, is demonstratively certain, because he 
cannot bind a man, but such as hath bound himself, and 
who is bound in heaven by his sin before his sentence in 
the church : as also because the binding of the church is 
merely accidental, and upon publication only ; and when 
the man repents, he is absolved before God, before the 


THE SICK PENITENT. 


187 


sentence of the church, upon his contrition and dereliction 
only ; and if he were not, the church could not absolve 
him. The consequent of which evident truth is this, that 
whatsoever impositions the church-officers impose upon 
the criminal, they are to avoid scandal, to testify repent¬ 
ance, and to exercise it, to instruct the people, to make 
them fear, to represent the act of God, and the secret and 
the true ptate of the sinner ; and although they are not es¬ 
sentially necessary to our pardon, yet they are become ne¬ 
cessary, when the church hath seized upon the sinner, by 
public notice of the crime : necessary (I say) for the re- 
mov’ng the scandal, and giving testimony of our contrition, 
and for the receiving all that comfort, which he needs, and 
can derive from the promises of pardon as they are pub¬ 
lished by him, that is commanded to preach them to all 
them that repent. And therefore although it cannot be ne¬ 
cessary as to the obtaining pardon, that the priest should 
in private absolve a sick man from his private sins, and 
there is no loosing, where there was no precedent binding, 
and he, that was only bound before God, can before him 
only be loosed: yet as to confess sins to any Christian in 
private may have many good ends, and to confess them to 
a clergyman may have many more ; so to hear God’s sen¬ 
tence at the mouth of the minister, pardon pronounced by 
God’s ambassador, is of huge comfort to them, that cannot 
otherwise be comforted, and whose infirmity needs it; and 
therefore it were very fit it were not neglected in the days 
of our fear and danger, of our infirmities and sorrow. 

5. The execution of this ministry being an act of pru¬ 
dence and charity, and therefore relative to changing cir¬ 
cumstances, it hath been, and in many cases may, and in 
some must be, rescinded and altered. The time of separa¬ 
tion may be lengthened and shortened, the condition made 
lighter or heavier, and for the same offence the clergyman 
s deposed, but yet admitted to the communion, for which 
one of the people, who hath no office to lose, is denied the 
benefit of communicating; and this sometimes when he 
might lawfully receive it; and a private man is separate, 
when a multitude or a prince is not, cannot, ought not; 
and, at last, when the case of sickness and danger of death 
did occur, they admitted all men that desired it; sometimes 
without scruple or difficulty, sometimes with some little re¬ 
straint in great or insolent cases (as in the case of apos- 


OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING 


188 

tacy, in which the council of Arles denied absolution, un 
less they received and gave public satisfaction by acts of 
repentance ; and some other councils, denied, at any time, 
to do it to such persons) according as seemed fitting to the 
present necessities of the church. All v/hich particular 
declare it to be no part of a Divine commandment, that 
any man should be denied to receive the communion, if he 
desires it, and if he be in any probable capacity of receiv¬ 
ing it. 

6. Since the separation was an act of liberty ana a direct 
negative, it follows that the institution was a mere doing 
that which they refused formerly, and to give the holy com¬ 
munion was the formality of absolution, and all the instru¬ 
ment and the whole matter of reconcilement; the taking 
off the punishment is the pardoning of the sin : for this 
without the other is but a word ; and if this be done, I care 
not, whether any thing be said or no. Vinum Dominicum 
ministratoris gratia est , is also true in this sense ; to give 
the chalice and cup is the grace and indulgence of the mi¬ 
nister : and when that is done, the man hath obtained the 
peace of the church; and to do that is all the absolution 
the church can give. And they were vain disputes, which 
were commenced, some few ages since, concerning the 
forms of absolution, whether they were indicative or opta¬ 
tive, by way of declaration or by way of sentence : for, at 
first they had no forms at all, but they said a prayer, and, 
after the manner of the Jews, laid hands upon the penitent, 
when they prayed over him, and so admitted him to the 
holy communion ; for since the church had no power over 
her children, but of excommunicating and denying them 
to attend upon holy offices and ministries respectively, nei¬ 
ther could they have any absolution, but to admit them 
thither, from whence formerly they were forbidden : what¬ 
soever ceremony or forms did signify, this was super-in¬ 
duced and arbitrary, alterable and accidental; it had variety, 
but no necessity. 

7. The practice consequent to this, is, that if the penitent 
be bound by the positive censures of the church, he is to be 
reconciled upon those conditions, which the laws of the 
church tie him to, in case he can perform them: if he can¬ 
not, he can no longer be prejudiced by the censure of the 
church, which had no relation but to the people, with whom 
the dying man is no longer to converse. For whatsoever re- 


THE SICK PENITENT. 


I8S 


lates to God, is to be transacted in spiritual ways, by con¬ 
trition, and internal graces ; and the mercy of the church is 
such, as to give him her peace and her blessing upon his 
undertaking to obey her injunctions, if he shall be able: 
which injunctions, if they be declared by public sentence, 
the minister hath nothing to do in the affairs, but to remind 
him of his obligation, and reconcile him, that is, give him 
the holy sacrament. 

8. If the penitent be not bound by public sentence, the 
minister is to make his repentance as great, and his heart 
as contrite, as he can ; to dispose him by the repetition of 
acts of grace in the way of prayer, and in real and exterior 
instances where he can ; and then to give him the holy com¬ 
munion in all the same cases, in which he ought not to 
have denied it to him in his health ; that is, even in the 
beginnings of such a repentance, which, by human signs, 
he believes to be real and holy ; and after this, the event 
must be left to God. The reason of the rule depends upon 
this: because there is no Divine commandment directly 
forbidding the rulers of the church to give the communion 
to any Christian that desires it, and professes repentance 
of his sins. And all church-discipline in every instance, 
and to every single person, was imposed upon him by men, 
who did it according to the necessities of this state and 
constitution of our affairs below : but we, who are but minis¬ 
ters and delegates of pardon and condemnation must re¬ 
sign and give up our judgment, when the man is no more 
to be judged by the sentences of man, and by the propor¬ 
tions of this world, but of the other ; to which if our re¬ 
conciliation does advantage, we ought in charity to send 
him forth with all the advantages he can receive ; for he 
will need them all. And therefore the Nicene council com¬ 
mands, that no man be deprived of this necessary pass¬ 
port in the article of his death, and calls this the ancient 
and canonical law of the church: and to minister it, only 
supposes the man in the communion of the church, not 
always in the state, but ever in the possibilities of sancti¬ 
fication. They who in the article and danger of death, 
were admitted to the communion, and tied to penance if 
they recovered (which was ever the custom of the ancient 
church, unless in very few cases,) were but in the threshold 
of repentance, in the commencement and first introduc¬ 
tions to a devout life : and indeed then it is a fit ministry 


OF ABSOLVING AND COMMUNICATING 


190 

that, it be given in all the periods of time, in which the 
pardon of sins is working, since it is the sacrament of that 
great mystery, and the exhibition of that blood, which is 
shed for the remission of sins. 

9. The minister of religion ougnt not to give the com¬ 
munion to a sick person, if he retains the affection to any 
sin, and refuses to disavow it, or profess repentance of all 
sins whatsoever, if he be required to do it. The reason is, 
because it is a certain death to him, and an increase of his 
misery, if he shall so profane the body and blood of Christ, 
as to take it into so unholy a breast, where Satan reigns, and 
sin is principal, and the Spirit is extinguished, and Christ 
loves not to enter, because he is not suffered to inhabit. 
But when he professes repentance, and does such acts of 
it, as his present condition permits, he is to be presumed to 
intend heartily, what he professes solemnly ; and the minis¬ 
ter is only the judge of outward act, and by that only he 
is to take information concerning the inward. But whether 
he be so or no, or if he be, whether that be timely, and 
effectual and sufficient towards the pardon of sins before 
God, is another consideration, of which we may conjecture 
here, but we shall know it at doomsday. The spiritual man 
is to do his ministry by the rules of Christ, and as the cus¬ 
toms of the church appoint him, and after the manner of 
men : the event is in the hands of God, and is to be expect¬ 
ed, not directly and wholly according to his ministry, but tc 
the former life, or the timely internal repentance and 
amendment, of which I have already given accounts. 
These ministries are acts of order and great assistances, 
but the sum of affairs does not rely upon them. And if any 
man puts his whole repentance upon this time, or all his 
hopes upon these ministries, he will find them and himself 
to fail. 

10. It is the minister’s office to invite sick and dying 
persons to the holy sacrament; such, whose lives were fair 
and laudable, and yet their sickness sad and violent, mak¬ 
ing them listless and of slow desires, and slower appre¬ 
hensions : that such persons, who are in the state of grace, 
may lose no accidental advantages of spiritual improve 
ment, but may receive into their dying bodies the symbols 
and great consignations of the resurrection, and into their 
souls the pledges of immortality; and may appear before 
God their Father in the union, and with the impresses and 


THE SICK PENITENT. 


/ 


191 


likeness, of their elder brother. But if the persons be of ill 
report, and have lived wickedly, they are not to be invited: 
because their case is hugely suspicious, though they then 
repent and call for mercy : but if they demand it, they 
are not to be denied : only let the minister, in general, re¬ 
present the evil consequents of an unworthy participation; 
and it the penitent will judge himself unworthy, let him 
stand candidate for pardon at the hands of God, and stand 
or fall by that unerring and merciful sentence; to which, 
his severity of condemning himself before men, will make 
the easier and more hopeful address. And the strictest 
among the Christians, who denied to reconcile lapsed per¬ 
sons after baptism, yet acknowledged that there were hopes 
reserved in the court of heaven for them, though not here: 
since we, who are easily deceived by the pretences of a real 
return, are tied to dispense God’s graces, as he hath given 
us commission, with fear and trembling,* and without too 
forward confidences; and God hath mercies, which we 
know not of; and therefore, because we know them not, 
such persons were referred to God’s tribunal, where he 
would find them, if they were to be had at all. 

11. When the holy sacrament is to be administered, let 
the exhortation be made proper to the mystery, but fitted 
to the man ; that is, that it be used for the advantages of 
faith, or love, or contrition ; let all the circumstances and 
parts of the Divine love be represented, all the mysterious 
advantages of the blessed sacrament be declared ; that it is 
the bread which came from heaven ; that it is the repre¬ 
sentation of Christ’s death to all the purposes and capa¬ 
cities of faith, and the real exhibition of Christ’s body and 
blood to all the purposes of the Spirit; that it is the earnest 
of the resurrection, and the seed of a glorious immortality : 
that as, by our cognation to the body of the first Adam, 
we took in death, so, by our union with the body of the 
second Adam, we shall have the inheritance of life; (for as 
by Adam came death, so by Christ cometh the resurrection 
of the dead ;f) that if we, being worthy communicants of 
these sacred pledges, be presented to God with Christ 
within us, our being accepted of God is certain, even for 
the sake of his well beloved that dwells within us: that this 
is the sacrament of that body, which was broken for our 
sins, of that blood, which purifies our souls, by which we 
* 1 Cor. ii. 3. t 1 Cor. xv. 22 . 


192 


OF ABSOLVING AJND COMMUNICATING, &c. 


are presented to God pure and holy in the beloved : that 
now we may ascertain our hopes, and make our faith con¬ 
fident ; “for he that hath given us his Son, how should not 
he, with him, give us all things else !”* Upon these, or the 
like considerations, the sick man may be assisted in his 
address, and his faith strengthened, and his hope confirmed, 
and his charity be enlarged. 

12. The manner of the sick man’s reception of the holy 
sacrament, hath in it nothing differing from the ordinary 
solemnities of the sacrament, save only that abatement is 
to be made of such accidental circumstances, as, by the 
laws and customs of the church, healthful persons are 
obliged to ; such as fasting, kneeling, &c. Though I re¬ 
member, that it was noted for great devotion in the Legate 
that died at Trent, that he caused himself to be sustained 
upon his knees, when he received the viaticum or the holy 
sacrament before his death ; and it was greater in Huniades, 
that he caused himself to be carried to the church, that 
there he might receive his Lord, in his Lord’s house ; and 
it was recorded for honour, that William, the pious arch¬ 
bishop of Bourges, a small time before his last agony, 
sprang out of his bed at the presence of the holy sacrament, 
and, upon his knees and his face, recommended his soul to 
his Saviour. But in these things no man is to be prejudiced 
or censured. 

13. Let not the holy sacrament be administered to dying 
persons, when they have no use of reason to make that 
duty acceptable, and the mysteries effective to the purposes 
of the soul. For the sacraments and ceremonies of the 
gospel operate not without the concurrent actions and 
moral influences of the suscipient. To infuse the chalice 
into the cold lips of the clinic may disturb his agony : but 
cannot relieve tjie soul, which only receives improvement 
by acts of grace and choice, to which the external rites are 
apt and appointed to minister in a capable person. All 
other persons, as fools, children, distracted persons, lethar¬ 
gical, apoplectical, or any ways senseless and incapable of 
human and reasonable acts, are to be assisted only by 
prayers: for they may prevail even for the absent, and for 
enemies, and for all *hose who join not in the office. 

* Rom. viii. 32. 


I 


VISITATION OF SICK PERSONS 


193 


SECTION V. 

Of ministering to the sick Person by the spiritual Man , 
as he is the Physician of Souls. 

1. In all cases of receiving confessions of sick men, and 
the assisting to the advancement of repentance, the minister 
is to apportion to every kind of sin such spiritual remedies, 
which are apt to mortify and cure the sin; such as absti¬ 
nence from their occasions and opportunities, to avoid 
temptations, to resist their beginnings, to punish the crime 
by acts of indignation against the person, fastings and 
prayer, alms and all the instances of charity, asking for¬ 
giveness, restitution of wrongs, satisfaction of injuries, acts 
of virtue contrary to the crimes. And although, in great 
and dangerous sicknesses, they are not directly to be im¬ 
posed, unless they are direct matters of duty : yet where they 
are medicinal, they are to be insinuated, and in general 
signification remarked to him, and undertaken accordingly : 
concerning which, when he returns to health, he is to re¬ 
ceive particular advices. And this advice was inserted into 
the penitential of England, in the time of Theodore, arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury, and afterward adopted into the 
canon of all the western churches. 

2. The proper temptations of sick men, for which a 
remedy is not yet provided, are unreasonable fears, and un¬ 
reasonable confidences, which the minister is to cure by 
the following considerations. 

Considerations against unreasonable Fears of not 
having our Sins pardoned. 

Many good men, especially such who have tender con¬ 
sciences, impatient of the least sin, to which they are ar¬ 
rived by a long grace, and a continual observation of their 
actions, and the parts of a lasting repentance, many times 
overact their tenderness, and turn their caution into scruple, 
and care of their duty into inquiries after the event, and 
askings after the counsels of God, and the sentences of 
doomsday. 

He that asks of the standers-by, or of the minister, whe¬ 
ther they think he shall be saved or damned, is to be an¬ 
swered with the words of pity and reproof. Seek not after 
new light for the searching into the privatest record of God : 
look as much as you list into the pages of revelation, for 
they concern your duty: but the event is registered in 


194 


CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST 


heaven, and we can expect no other certain notices of it, 
but that it shall be given them, for whom it is prepared by 
the Father of mercies. We have light enough to tell our 
duty; and if we do that, we need not fear what tl.e issue 
will be ; and if we do not, let us never look for more light 
or inquire after God’s pleasure concerning our souls, since 
we so little serve his ends in those things, where he hath 
given us light. But yet this I add, that as pardon of sins, 
in the Old Testament,* was nothing but removing the 
punishment, which then was temporal, and therefore many 
times they could tell, if their sins were pardoned ; and con¬ 
cerning pardon of sins, they then had no fears of conscience, 
but while punishment was on them, for so long indeed 
it was unpardoned, and how long it would so remain, it 
was matter of fear, and of present sorrow : besides this, in 
the gospel, pardon of sins is another thing; pardon of sins 
is a sanctification ; Christ came to take away our sins by 
turning every one of us from our iniquities ;f and there is 
not in the nature of the thing any expectation of pardon, or 
sign or signification of it, but so far as the thing itself dis¬ 
covers itself. As we hate sin, and grow in grace, and arrive 
at the state of holiness which is also a state of repentance 
and imperfection, but yet of sincerity of heart and diligent 
endeavour ; in the same degree we are to judge concerning 
the forgiveness of sins : for indeed that is the evangelical 
forgiveness, and it signifies our pardon, because it effects 
it, or rather it is in the nature of the thing ; so that we are 
to inquire into no hidden records : forgiveness of sins is 
not a secret sentence, a word or a record : but it is a state of 
change, and effected upon us : and upon ourselves we are 
to look for it, to read it, and understand it. We are only 
to be curious of our duty, and confident of the article of 
remission of sins ; and the conclusion of these premises 
will be, that we shall be full of hopes of a prosperous re¬ 
surrection ; and our fear and trembling are no instances of 
our calamity, but parts of duty; we shall sure enough be 
wafted to the shore, although we be tossed with the winds 
of our sighs, and the unevenness of our fears, and the 
ebbings and flowings of our passions, if we sail in a right 
channel, and steer by a perfect compass, and look up to 
God, and call for his help, and do our own endeavour 
There are very many reasons, why men ought not to de- 

* Matt. ir. 6. t Acts iii. 26. 


UNREASONABLE FEARS IN SICKNESS. 


195 

spair; and there are not very many men, that ever go be¬ 
yond a hope, till they pass into possession. If our fears 
have any mixture of hope, that is enough to enable and to 
excite our duty : and if we have a strong hope, when we 
cast about, we shall find reason enough to have many fears. 
Let not this fear weaken our hands; and if it allay our 
gaieties and our confidences, it is no harm. In this uncer¬ 
tainty we must abide, if we have committed sins after bap¬ 
tism : and those confidences, which some men glory in, are 
not real supports or good foundations. The fearing man 
is the safest; and if he fears on his death-bed, it is but 
what happens to most considering men, and what was to be 
looked for all his life-time : he talked of the terrors of death, 
and death is the king of terrors: and therefore it is no 
strange thing, if then he be hugely afraid; if he be not, it 
is either a great felicity or a great presumption. But if he 
wants some degree of comfort, or a greater degree of hope, 
let him be refreshed by considering, 

1. That Christ came into the world to save sinners.* 2. 
That God delights not in the confusion and death of sin- 
ners.f 3. That in heaven there is great joy at the conver¬ 
sion of a sinner.:}: 4. That Christ is a perpetual advocate, 
daily interceding with his Father for our pardon.§ 5. 

That God uses infinite arts, instruments, and devices, to 
reconcile us to himself. 6. That he prays us to be in cha¬ 
rity with him and to be forgiven.|| 7. That he sends angels 
to keep us from violence and evil company, from tempta¬ 
tions and surprises, and his Holy Spirit to guide us in 
holy ways, and his servants to warn us and remind us per¬ 
petually ; and therefore since certainly he is so desirous 
to save us, as appears by his word, by his oaths, by his very 
nature, and his daily artifices of mercy ; it is not likely 
that he will condemn us without great provocations of his 
majesty, and perseverance in them. 8. That the covenant 
of the gospel is a covenant of grace and repentance, and 
being established with so many great solemnities and mi¬ 
racles from heaven, must signify a huge favour and a mighty 
change of things: and therefore that repentance, which 
is the great condition of it, is a grace, that does not ex¬ 
pire in little accents and minutes, but hath a great latitude 
of signification, and large extension of parts, under the pro- 

* 1 Tim. i. 15. t Ezek. xxxiii. 11 t Luke xv. 7, $ 1 John ii. 1. 

|| 2 Cor. v. 20. 


CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST 


196 

lection of all which persons are safe, even when they fear 
exceedingly. 9. That there are great degrees and differ¬ 
ences of glory in heaven ; and therefore, if we estimate oar 
piety by proportions to the more eminent persons and de- 
vouter people, we are not to conclude, we shall not enter 
into the same state of glory, but that we shall not go into 
the same degrees. 10. That although forgiveness of sins 
is consigned to us in baptism, and that this baptism is but 
once, and cannot be repeated, yet forgiveness of sins is the 
grace of the gospel, which is perpetually remanent upon 
us, and secured unto us so long as we have not renounced 
our baptism: for then we enter into the condition of re¬ 
pentance ; and repentance is not an indivisible grace, or a 
thing performed at once, but is working all our lives; and 
therefore so is our pardon, which ebbs and flows, according 
as we discompose or renew the decency of our baptismal 
promises; and therefore it ought to be certain, that no 
man despair of pardon, but he that hath vo untarily re¬ 
nounced his baptism, or willingly estranged himself from 
that covenant. He that sticks to it, and still professes the 
religion, and approves the faith, and endeavours to obey 
and to do his duty, this man hath all the veracity of God 
to assure him and give him confidence, that he is not in an 
impossible state of salvation, unless God cuts him off, be¬ 
fore he can work, or that he begins to work, when he can 
no longer choose. 11. And then let him consider, the 
more he fears, the more he hates his sin, that is the cause 
of it, and the less he can be tempted to it, and the more 
desirous he is of heaven ; and therefore such fears are good 
instruments of grace, and good signs of a future pardon. 
12. That God in the old law, although he made a covenant 
of perfect obedience, and did not promise pardon at all 
after great sins, yet he did give pardon and declared it so 
to them for their own and for our sakes too. So he did to 
David, to Manasses, to the whole nation of the Israelites, 
ten times in the wilderness, even after their apostacies and 
idolatries. And in the prophets,* the mercies of God and 
his remission of sins were largely preached, though, in th.e 
law, God put on the robes of an angry judge, and a severe 
lord. But therefore in the gospel, where he hath established 
the whole sum of affairs upon faith and repentance, if God 
should not pardon great sinners, that repent after baptism, 

* Ezek. xviii. Joel ii. 


UNREASONABLE FEARS IN SICKNESS. 197 

with a free dispensation, the gospel were far harder than 
the intolerable covenant of the law. 13. That if a prose¬ 
lyte went into the Jewish communion, and were circum¬ 
cised and baptized, he entered into all the hopes of good 
things, which God had promised, or would give to his 
people : and yet that was but the covenant of works. If 
then the Gentile proselytes, by their circumcision and le¬ 
gal baptism were admitted to a state of pardon, to last so 
long as they were in the covenant, even after their admis¬ 
sion, for sins committed against Moses’s law, which they 
then undertook to observe exactly; in the gospel, which 
is the covenant of faith, it must needs be certain, that there 
is a greater grace given, and an easier condition entered 
into, than was that of the Jewish law: and that is nothing 
else, but that abatement is made for our infirmities, and our 
single evils, and our timely repented and forsaken habits 
of sin, and our violent passions, when they are contested 
withal, and fought with, and under discipline, and in the 
beginnings and progresses of mortification. 14. That God 
hath erected in his church a whole order of men, the main 
part and dignity of whose work it is to remit and retain sins 
by a perpetual and daily ministry; and this they do, not 
only in baptism, but in all their offices to be administered 
afterward; in the holy sacrament of the eucharist, which 
exhibits the symbols of that blood which was shed for pardon 
of our sins, and therefore by its continued ministry and re¬ 
petition declares, that all that while we are within the ordi¬ 
nary powers and usual dispensations of pardon, even so long 
as we are in any probable dispositions to receive that holy 
sacrament. And the same effect is also signified and ex¬ 
hibited in the whole power of the keys, which, if it extends 
to private sins, sins done in secret, it is certain it does also 
to public. But this is a greater testimony of the certainty 
of the remissibility of our greatest sins: for public sins, as 
they always have a sting and a superadded formality of 
scandal and ill example, so they are most commonly the 
greatest; such as murder, sacrilege, and others of uncon¬ 
cealed nature, and unprivate action; and if God, for these 
worst of evils, hath appointed an office of ease and pardon, 
which is, and may, daily be administered, that will be an 
uneasy pusillanimity and fond suspicion of God’s good¬ 
ness, to fear, that our repentance shall be rejected, even 
though we have committed the greatest, or the most of 
r 2 2 u 2 


A 98 CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST 

evils. 15. And it was concerning baptized Christians that 
St. John said, “ If any man sin, we have an advocate with 
the Father, and he is the propitiation for our sinsand con¬ 
cerning lapsed Christians, St. Paul gave instruction, that. 
“ If any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual 
restore such a man in the spirit of meekness ; considering, 
lest ye also be tempted.” The Corinthian Christian com¬ 
mitted incest, and was pardoned; and Simon Magus, after 
he was baptized, offered to commit his own sin of simony ; 
and yet St. Peter bid him pray for pardon : and St. James 
tells, that “ if the sick man sends for the elders of the 
church, and they pray over him, and he confesses his sins, 
they shall be forgiven him.” 16. That only one sin is de¬ 
clared irremissible, “ the sin against the Holy Ghost, the 
sin unto death,” as St. John calls it, for which we are not 
bound to pray ; for all others we are : and, certain it is, no 
man commits a sin against the Holy Ghost, if he be afraid 
he hath, and desires that he had not; for such penitential 
passions are against the definition of that sin. 17. That 
all the sermons in the Scripture written to Christians and 
disciples of Jesus, exhorting men to repentance, to be af¬ 
flicted, to mourn and to weep, to confession of sins, are sure 
testimonies of God’s purpose and desire to forgive us, even 
when we fall after baptism: and if our fall after baptism 
were irrecoverable, then all preaching were in vain, and 
our faith were also in vain, and we could not with comfort 
rehearse the Creed, in which, as soon as ever we profess 
Jesus to have died for our sins, we also are condemned by 
our own conscience of a sin, that shall not be forgiven; 
and then all exhortations, and comforts, and fasts, and dis¬ 
ciplines were useless and too late, if they were not given 
us before we can understand them; for most commonly, 
as soon as we can, we enter into the regions of sin ; 
for we commit evil actions before we understand, and 
together with our understanding they begin to be imputed. 
18. That if it could be otherwise, infants were very ill 
provided for in the church, who were baptized, when 
they have no stain upon their brows, but the misery they 
contracted from Adam; and they are left to be angels 
for ever after, and live innocently in the midst of their ig¬ 
norances, and weaknesses, and temptations, and the heat 
and follies of youth; or else to perish in an eternal ruin. 
We cannot think or speak good things of God, if we en 


UNREASONABLE FEARS IN SICKNESS. 


190 

tertain such evil suspicions of the mercies of the Father of 
our Lord Jesus. 19. That the long sufferance and pa¬ 
tience of God is indeed wonderful; but therefore it leaves 
us in certainties of pardon, so long as there is a possibility 
to return, if we reduce the power to act. 20. That God 
calls upon us to forgive our brother seventy times seven 
times; and yet all that is but like the forgiving a hundred 
pence for his sake, who forgives us ten thousand talents : 
for so the Lord professed, that he had done to him, that 
was his servant and his domestic. 21. That if we can for¬ 
give a hundred thousand times, it is certain God will do 
so to us ; our blessed Lord having commanded us to pray 
for pardon, as we pardon our offending and penitent bro¬ 
ther. 22. That even in the case of very great sins, and 
great judgments inflicted upon the sinners, wise and good 
men and presidents of religion have declared their sense to 
be, that God spent all his anger, and made it expire in that 
temporal misery ; and so it was supposed to have been done 
in the case of Ananias; but that the hope of any penitent 
man may not rely upon any uncertainty, we find in holy 
Scripture, that those Christians, who had, for their scan¬ 
dalous crimes, deserved to be given over to Satan to be 
buffeted, yet had hopes to be saved in the day of the Lord. 
23. That God glories in the titles of mercy and forgiveness, 
and will not have his appellatives so finite and limited as 
to expire in one act, or in a seldom pardon. 24. That 
man’s condition were desperate, and like that of the fallen 
angels equally desperate, but unequally oppressed, con¬ 
sidering our infinite weaknesses and ignorances (in respect 
of their excellent understanding and perfect choice,) if he 
could be admitted to no repentance after his infant bap¬ 
tism ; and if he may be admitted to one, there is nothing in 
the covenant of the gospel, but he may also to a second, 
and so for ever, as long as he can repent, and return and 
live to God in a timely religion. 25. That every man is a 
sinner: “ In many things we offend all and, “ if we say 
we have no sin we deceive ourselves :”f and therefore 
either all must perish, or else there is mercy for all; and 
so there is upon this very stock, because “ Christ died for 
sinners,and, “ God hath comprehended all under sin, that 
he might have mercy upon all.”§ 26. That if ever God 
sends temporal punishments injp the world with purposes 

* James iii. 2 t 1 John i. 8. t Rom. v. 8. § Rom. xi. 32. 


AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR. 


200 

of amendment, and if they be not, all of them, certain con* 
signations to hell, and unless every man, that breaks his 
leg, or in punishment loses a child or wife, be certainly 
damned, it is certain, that God, in these cases, is angry and 
loving, chastises the sin to amend the person, and smites, 
that he may cure, and judges, that he may absolve. 27. 
That he that will not quench the smoking flax, nor break 
the bruised reed, will not tie us to perfection, and the laws 
and measures of heaven upon earth; and if, in every pe¬ 
riod of our repentance, he is pleased with our duty, and 
the voice of our heart and the hand of our desires, he hath 
told us plainly, that he will net only pardon all the sins of 
the days of our folly, but the returns and surprises of sins 
in the days of repentance, if we give no way, and allow no 
affection, and give no place to any thing, that is God’s 
enemy: all the past sins, and all the seldom-returning and 
ever-repented evils being put upon the accounts of the 
cross. 

An Exercise against Despair , in the Day of our Death . 

To which may be added this short exercise, to be used 
for the curing the temptation to direct despair, in case that 
the hope and faith of good men be assaulted in the day of 
their calamity. 

I consider that the ground of my trouble is my sin ; 
and if it were not for that, I should not need to be trou¬ 
bled ; but the help, that all the world looks for, is such, as 
supposes a man to be a sinner. Indeed if, from myself, I 
were to derive my title to heaven, then my sins were a just 
argument of despair ; but now that they bring me to Christ, 
that they drive me to an appeal to God’s mercies, and to take 
sanctuary in the cross, they ought not, they cannot infer a 
just cause of despair. I am sure it is a stranger thing, that 
God should take upon him hands and feet, and those hands 
and feet should be nailed upon a cross, than that a man 
should be partaker of the felicities of pardon and life eternal; 
and it were stranger yet that God should do so much for 
man, and that a man that desires it, that labours for it, that is 
in life and possibilities of working his salvation, should in¬ 
evitably miss that end, for which that God suffered so 
much. For what is the meaning, and what is the extent, 
and what are the significations of the Divine mercy in 
pardoning sinners 1 If it be thought a great matter that a 


AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR. 


201 

am charged with original sin, I confess I feel the weight 
of it in loads of temporal infelicities, and proclivities to 
sin ; but 1 fear not the guilt of it, since I am baptized: 
and it cannot do honour to the reputation of God’s mercy, 
that it should be all spent in remissions of what I never 
chose, never acted, never knew of, could not help, concern¬ 
ing which I received no commandment, no prohibition. 
But, blessed be God, it is ordered in just measures, that 
that original evil, which I contracted without my will, 
should be taken away without my knowledge ; and what 1 
suffered before I had a being, was cleansed before I had 
a useful understanding. But I am taught to believe God’s 
mercies to be infinite, not only in himself, but to us; for 
mercy is a relative term, and we are its correspondents: 
of all the creatures which God made, we only, in a proper 
sense, are the subjects of mercy and remission. Angels 
have more of God’s bounty than we have, but not so much 
of his mercy; and beasts have little rays of his kindness, 
and effects of his wisdom and graciousness in pretty dona¬ 
tives; but nothing of mercy : for they have no laws, and 
therefore no sins, and need no mercy, nor are capable of 
any. Since, therefore, man alone is the correlative or 
proper object and vessel of reception of an infinite mercy, 
and that mercy is in giving and forgiving, I have reason 
to hope, that he will so forgive me, that my sins shall 
not hinder me of heaven ; or because it is a gift, I may also, 
upon the stock of the same infinite mercy, hope, he will 
give heaven to me; and if I have it either upon the title 
of giving or forgiving, it is alike to me, and will alike mag¬ 
nify the glories of the Divine mercy. And because eternal 
life is the gift of God, # I have less reason to despair: for 
if my sins were fewer, and my disproportions towards such 
a glory were less, and my evenness more ; yet it is still a 
gift, and I could not receive it but as a free and a gracious 
donative ; and so I may still; God can still give it me ; 
and it is not an impossible expectation to wait and look 
for such a gift at the hands of the God of mercy : the best 
men deserve it not; and I, who am the worst, may have it 
given me. And I consider, that God hath set no mea¬ 
sures of his mercy, but that we be within the covenant; 
that is, repenting persons, endeavouring to serve him with 
an honest single heart; and that within this covenant 

* Rom. vi. 23. 


AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR. 


202 

there is a very great latitude, and variety of persons, and 
degrees, and capacities; and therefore, that it cannot 
stand with the proportions of so infinite, a mercy, that obe¬ 
dience be exacted to such a point, which he never express¬ 
ed, unless it should be the least, and that to which all ca¬ 
pacities, though otherwise unequal, are fitted and sufficient¬ 
ly enabled. But, however, I find, that the Spirit of God 
taught the writers of the New Testament to apply to us 
all in general, and to every single person in particular, 
some gracious words, which God, in the Old Testament, 
spake to one man, upon a special occasion, in a single and 
temporal instance. Such are the words which God spake 
to Joshua; “ I will never fail thee nor forsake thee 
and, upon the stock of that promise, St. Paul forbids covet¬ 
ousness, and persuades contentedness,* because those 
words were spoken by God to Joshua in another case. If 
the gracious words of God have so great extension of 
parts, and intention of kind purposes, then how many com¬ 
forts have we, upon the stock of all the excellent words, 
which are spoken in the prophets and in the Psalms? and 
I will never more question, whether they be spoken con¬ 
cerning me, having such an authentic precedent so to 
expound the excellent words of God; all the treasures of 
God which are in the Psalms, are my own riches, and the 
wealth of my hope ; there will I look ; and whatsoever I 
can need, that I will depend upon. For certainly if we 
could understand it, that which is infinite (as God is) must 
needs be some such kind of thing; it must go whither it 
was never sent, and signify what was not first intended, 
and it must warm with its light, and shine with its heat, 
and refresh when it strikes, and heal when it wounds, and 
ascertain where it makes afraid, and intend all when it 
warns one, and mean a great deal in a small word. And as 
the sun, passing to its southern tropic, looks with an open 
eye upon his sun-burnt ^Ethiopians, but at the same time 
sends light from its posterns and collateral influences 
from the back-side of his beams, and sees the corners of 
the east, when his face tends towards the west, because he 
is a round body of fire, and hath some little images and 
resemblances of the Infinite; so is God’s mercy : when it 
looked upon Moses, it relieved St. Paul, and it pardoned 
David, and gave hope to Manasses, and might have re- 

* Heb. xiii. 5. 


\ 


AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESPAIR. 


203 


stored Judas, if he would have had hope, and used him¬ 
self accordingly. But as to my own case, I have sinned 
grievously and frequently: but I have repented it; but I 
have begged pardon; I have confessed it and forsaken it. 
I cannot undo what was done, and I perish, if God hath 
appointed no remedy, if there be no remission; but then 
my religion falls together with my hope, and God’s word 
fails as well as I. But I believe the article of forgiveness 
of sins ; and if there be any*such thing, I may do well; for 
I have, and do, and will do that, which all good men call 
repentance; that is, I will be humbled before God, and 
mourn for my sin, and for ever ask forgiveness, and judge 
myself, and leave it with haste, and mortify it with dili¬ 
gence, and watch against it carefully. And this I can do 
but in the manner of a man ; I can but mourn for my sins, 
as I apprehend grief in other instances; but I will rather 
choose to sutler all evils, than to do one deliberate act 
of sin. I know, my sins are greater than my sorrow, and 
too many for my memory, and too insinuating to be pre¬ 
vented by all my care ; but I know also, that God knows 
and pities my infirmities ; and how far that will extend, I 
know not, but that it will reach so far, as to satisfy my 
needs is the matter of my hope. But this I am sure of, 
that I have, in my great necessity, prayed humbly and with 
great desire, and sometimes I have been heard in kind, 
and sometimes have had a bigger mercy instead of it; and 
I have the hope of prayers, and the hope of my confession, 
and the hope of my endeavour, and the hope of many 
promises, and of God’s essential goodness; and I am sure 
that God hath heard my prayers, and verified his promises 
in temporal instances, for he ever gave me sufficient for my 
life ; and although he promised such supplies, and grounded 
the confidences of them upon our first seeking the kingdom 
of heaven and its righteousness, yet he hath verified it to 
me who have not sought it as I ought; but therefore I 
* hope he accepted my endeavour, or will give his great 
gifts and our great expectation even to the weakest en¬ 
deavour ; to the least, so it be a hearty piety. And some¬ 
times I have had some cheerful visitations of God’s Spirit, 
and my cup hath been crowned with comfort, and the wine 
that made my heart glad, danced in the chalice, and 1 
was glad, that God would have me so; and therefore I 
hope^ this cloud may pass; for that, which was then a 


204 


AN EXERCISE AGAINST DESTAIR. 


real cause of comfort, is so still, if I could discern it, and 
I shall discern it, when the vail is taken from mine eyes. 
And, (blessed be God,) I can still remember, that there 
are temptations to despair; and they could not be tempta¬ 
tions if they were not apt to persuade, and had seeming 
probability on their side; and they that despair, think they 
do it with great reason; for if they were not confident 
of the reason, but that it were such an argument as might 
be opposed or suspected, then they could not despair. De¬ 
spair assents as firmly and strongly as faith itself; but be¬ 
cause it is a temptation, and despair is a horrid sin, there¬ 
fore it is certain, those persons are unreasonably abused, 
and they have no reason to despair, for all their confidence; 
and therefore, although I have strong reasons to condemn 
myself, yet I have more reason to condemn my despair, 
which therefore is unreasonable because it is a sin, and a 
dishonour to God, and a ruin to my condition, and veri¬ 
fies itself, if I do not look to it. For as the hypochondriac 
person that thought himself dead, made his dream true, 
when he starved himself, because dead people eat not: so 
do despairing sinners lose God’s mercies, by refusing to use 
and to believe them. And I hope it is a disease of judg¬ 
ment not an intolerable condition, that I am falling into: 
because I have been told so concerning others who there¬ 
fore have been afflicted, because they see not their pardon 
sealed after the manner of this world, and the affairs of 
the Spirit are transacted by immaterial notices, by propo¬ 
sitions and spiritual discourses, by promises, which are to 
be verified hereafter; and here we must live in a cloud, in 
darkness under a veil, in fear and uncertainties, and our 
very living by faith and hope is a life of mystery and secre¬ 
cy, the only part of the manner of that life, in which we 
shall live in the state of separation. And when a distemper 
of body or an infirmity of mind, happens in the instances 
of such secret and reserved affairs, w r e may easily mistake 
the manner of our notices for the uncertainty of the thing; 
and therefore it is but reason, I should stay, till the state 
and manner of my abode be changed, before I despair : 
there it can be no sin, nor error: here it may be both ; and 
if it be that, it is also this; and then a man may perish for 
being miserable, and be undone for being a fool. In con¬ 
clusion, my hope is in God, and I will trust him with the 
event, which I am sure will be just, and I hope full of 


CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST PRESUMPTION. 


205 


mercy. However, now I will use all the spiritual arts of 
reason and religion to make me more and more to love 
God, that if I miscarry, charity also shall fail, and something 
that loves God shall perish and be damned ; which if it be 
possible, then I may do well. 

These considerations may be useful to men of little 
hearts, and of great piety : or if they be persons, who have 
lived without infamy, or begun their repentance so late, 
that it is very imperfect, and yet so early, that it was be¬ 
fore the arrest of death. But if the man be a vicious per¬ 
son, and hath persevered in a vicious life till his death bed, 
these considerations are not proper. Let him inquire in 
the words of the first disciples after Pentecost, “ Men and 
brethren, what shall we do to be saved 7” and if they can 
but entertain so much hope as to enable them to do so 
much of their duty, as they can for the present, it is all 
that can be provided for them; an inquiry, in their case, 
can have no other purposes of religion or prudence. And 
the minister must be infinitely careful, that he do not go 
about to comfort vicious persons with the comforts belong¬ 
ing to God’s elect, lest he prostitute holy things, and 
make them common, and his sermons deceitful, and vices 
be encouraged in others, and the man himself find, that 
he was deceived, when he descends into his house of 
sorrow. 

But because very few men are tempted with too great 
fears of failing, but very many are tempted by confidence 
and presumption; the ministers of religion had need be 
instructed with spiritual armour to resist this fiery dart of 
the devil, when it operates to evil purposes. 

SECTION VI. 

Considerations against Presumption. 

I have already enumerated many particulars to provoke 
a drowsy conscience to a scrutiny and to a suspicion of 
himself, that by seeing cause to suspect his condition, he 
might more freelv accuse himself, and attend to the neces¬ 
sities and duties of repentance ; but if either before, or in 
his repentance, he grow too big in his spirit, so as either 
he does some little violence to the modesties of humility, 
or abates his care and zeal of his repentance, the spirtual 
man must allay his forwardness by representing to him, 
1. That the growths in grace are long, difficult, uncertain, 


206 


REMEDIES AGAINST 


hindered, of many parts and great variety. 2. That an 
infant grace is soon dashed and discountenanced, often 
running into an inconvenience and the evils of an impru¬ 
dent conduct, being zealous, and forward, and therefore 
confident but always with the least reason, and the great* 
est danger; like children and young fellows, whose confi¬ 
dence hath no other reason, but that they understand not 
their danger and their follies. 3. That he that puts on his 
armour, ought not to boast, as he that puts it off; and the 
apostle chides the Galatians for ending in the flesh, after 
they had begun in the spirit. 4. That a man cannot think 
too meanly of himself, but very easily he may think too 
high. 5. That a wise man will always in a matter of great 
concernment think the worst, and a good man will condemn 
himself with hearty sentence. 6. That humility and mo¬ 
desty of judgment and of hope are very good instruments 
to procure a mercy and a fair reception at the day of our 
death; but presumption or bold opinions serve no end of 
God or man, and is always imprudent, ever fatal, and of 
all things in the world is its own greatest enemy ; for the 
more any man presumes, the greater reason he hath to fear. 
7. That a man’s heart is infinitely deceitful, unknown to 
itself, not certain in his own acts, praying one way, and 
desiring another, wandering and imperfect, loose and 
various, worshipping God, and entertaining sin, following 
what it hates, and running from what it flatters, loving to 
be tempted and betrayed : petulant like a wanton girl run¬ 
ning from, that it might invite the fondness and enrage 
the appetite of the foolish young man, or the evil temptation 
that follows it; cold and indifferent one while, and pre¬ 
sently zealous and passionate, furious and indiscreet; not 
understood of itself, or any one else, and deceitful beyond 
all the arts and numbers of observation. 8. That it is certain, 
we have highly sinned against God, but we are not so cer¬ 
tain, that our repentance is real and effective, integral and 
sufficient. 9. That it is not revealed to us, whether or no 
the time of our repentance be not past; or, if it be not, yet 
how far God will give us pardon, and upon what condition, 
or after what sufferings or duties, is still under a cloud. 
10. That virtue and vice are oftentimes so near neighbours, 
that we pass into each other’s borders without observation, 
and think we do justice, when we are cruel ; or call our¬ 
selves liberal, when we are loose and foolish in expenses; 


PRESUMPTION. 


207 

and are amorous, when we commend our own civilities and 
good nature. 11. That we allow to ourselves so many 
little irregularities, that insensibly they swell to so great a 
heap, that from thence we have reason to fear an evil: for 
an army of frogs and flies may destroy all the hopes of our 
harvest. 12. That when we do that which is lawful, and 
do all that we can in those bounds, we commonly and ea¬ 
sily run out of our proportions. 13. That it is not easy 
to distinguish the virtues of our nature from the virtues of 
our choice ; and we may expect the reward of temperance, 
when it is against our nature to be drunk; or we hope to 
have the coronet of virgins for our morose disposition, or 
our abstinence from marriage upon secular ends. 14. That, 
it may be, we call every little sigh, or the keeping a fish- 
day the duty of repentance, or have entertained false prin¬ 
ciples in the estimate and measures of virtues : and, con¬ 
trary to that steward in the gospel, we write down four¬ 
score, when we should set down but fifty. 15. That it is 
better to trust the goodness and justice of God with our 
accounts, than to offer him large bills. 16. That we are 
commanded by Christ to sit down in the lowest place, till 
the master of the house bids us sit up higher. 17. That 
“when we have done all that we can, we are unprofitable 
servantsand yet no man does all that he can do ; and 
therefore is more to be despised and undervalued. 18. That 
the self-accusing publican was justified rather than the 
thanksgiving and confident Pharisee. 19. That if Adam 
in Paradise, and David in his house, and Solomon in the 
temple, and Peter in Christ’s family, and Judas in the col- 
lege of apostles, and Nicholas among the deacons, and the 
angels in heaven itself, did fall so foully and dishonestly; 
then it is prudent advice, that we be not high-minded, but 
fear: and, when we stand mq^t confidently, take heed lest 
we fall: and yet there is nothing so likely to make us fall 
as pride and great opinions, which ruined the angels, which 
God resists, which all men despise, and which betrays us 
into carelessness, and a reckless, undiscerning, and an un¬ 
wary spirit. 

4. Now the main parts of the ecclesiastical ministry are 
done; and that which remains is, that the minister pray 
over him, and remind him to do good actions as he is ca¬ 
pable ; to call upon God for pardon : to put his whole 
trust in him; to resign himself to God’s disposing ; to be 


208 


PRAYERS AT THE 


patient and even; to renounce every ill word, or thought 
or indecent action, which the violence of his sickness may 
cause in him ; to beg of God to give him his Holy Spirit tc 
guide him in his agony ; and his holy angels to guard him 
in his passage. 

5. Whatsoever is besides this, concerns the standers-by; 
that they do all their ministries diligently and temperate¬ 
ly ; that they join with much charity and devotion in the 
prayer of the minister: that they make no outcries or ex¬ 
clamations in the departure of the soul; and that they 
make no judgment concerning the dying person by his 
dying quietly or violently, with comfort or without, with 
great fears or a cheerful confidence, with sense or without, 
like a lamb or like a lion, with convulsions or semblances 
of great pain, of like an expiring and a spent candle; for 
these happen to all men, without rule, without any known 
reason, but according as God pleases to dispense the grace 
or the punishment, for reasons only known to himself. Let 
us lay our hands upon our mouth, and adore the mysteries 
of the Divine wisdom and providence, and pray to God to 
give the dying man rest and pardon, and to ourselves 
grace to live well, and the blessing of a holy and a happy 
death. 

SECTION VII. 

Offices to be said by the Minister , in his visitation of the Sick. 

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost. 

“ Our Father, which art in heaven,” &c. 

Let the Priest say this Prayer secretly. 

O eternal Jesus, thou great lover of souls, who hast con¬ 
stituted a ministry in the church to glorify thy name, and 
to serve in the assistance of 4fiose that come to thee pro¬ 
fessing thy discipline and service, give grace to me the un- 
worthiest of thy servants, that I, in this my ministry, may 
purely and zealously intend thy glory, and effectually may 
minister comfort and advantages to this sick person (whom 
God assoil from all his offences;) and grant that nothing 
of thy grace may perish to him by the unworthiness of the 
minister; but let thy Spirit speak by me, and give me pru¬ 
dence and charity, wisdom and diligence, good observa¬ 
tion and apt discourses, a certain judgment and merciful 
dispensation, that the soul of thy servant may pass from 


VISITATION OF THE SICK. 


209 

this state of imperfection to the perfections of the state of 
glory, through thy mercies, O eternal Jesus. Amen. 

The Psalm. 

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, 
hear my voice : let thine ears be attentive, to the voice of 
my supplications. 

If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who 
should stand ? 

But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be 
feared. 

I wait for the Lord : my soul doth wait; and in his word 
do I hope. 

*My soul waiteth for the Lord, more than they that watch 
for the morning. 

Let Israel hope in the Lord ; for with the Lord there is 
mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. 

And he shall redeem his servants from all their iniquities. 
Psal. exxx. 

Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the 
wickedness of my heels shall compass me about? Psal. 
xlix. 5. 

No man can, by any means, redeem his brother, nor give 
to God a ransom for him. Ver. 7. 

For the redemption of their soul is precious, and it 
ceaseth for ever. Ver. 8. 

That he should still live for ever, and not see corruption. 
Ver. 9. 

But wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish per¬ 
son perish, and leave their wealth to others. Ver. 10. 

But God will redeem my soul from the power of the 
grave: for he shall receive me. Ver. 15. 

As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I 
shall be satisfied, when I awake in thy likeness. Psal. xvii. 
15. 

Thou shalt show me the path of life : in thy presence is 
the fulness of joy: at thy right hand there are pleasures for 
evermore. Psal xvi. 11. 

Glory be to the Father, &c. 

As it was in the beginning, &c. 

Let us pray. 

Almighty God, father of mercies, the God of peace and 
comfort, of rest and pardon, we, thy servants, though un- 
s 2 2x2 


PRAYERS AT THE 


210 

worthy to pray to thee, yet, in duty to thee and charity tc 
our brother, humbly beg mercy of thee for him to descend 
upon his body and his soul: one sinner, O Lord, for another, 
the miserable for the afflicted, the poor for him that is in 
need : but thou givest thy graces and thy favours by the 
measures of thrown mercies, and in proportion to our ne¬ 
cessities. We humbly come to thee in the name of Jesus, 
for the merit of our Saviour, and the mercies of our God, 
praying thee to pardon the sins of this thy servant, and to 
put them all upon the accounts of the cross, and to 
bury them in the grave of Jesus : that they may never rise 
up in judgment against thy servant, nor bring him to 
shame and confusion of face in the day of final inquiry a^ 
sentence. Amen. 

II. 

Give thy servant patience in his sorrows, comfort in this 
his sickness, and restore him to health, if it seem good to 
thee, in order to thy great ends, and his greatest interest. 
And however thou shalt determine concerning him in this 
affair, yet make his repentance perfect, and his passage 
safe, and his faith strong, and his hope modest and confi¬ 
dent ; that when thou shalt call his soul from the prison of 
the body, it may enter into the securities and rest of the 
sons of God, in the bosom of blessedness, and the custodies 
of Jesus. Amen. 

III. 

Thou, O Lord, knowest all the necessities and all the 
infirmities of thy servant: fortify his spirit with spiritual 
joys and perfect resignation, and take from him all degrees 
of inordinate or insecure affections to this world, and en¬ 
large his heart with desires of being with thee, and of 
freedom from sins, and fruition of God. 

IV. 

Lord, let not any pain or passion discompose the order 
and decency of his thoughts and duty ; and lay no more 
upon thy servant, than thou wilt make him able to bear, 
and together with the temptation do thou provide a way 
to escape ; even by the mercies of a longer and a more 
holy life, or by the mercies of a blessed death : even as is 
pleaseth thee, O Lord, so let it be. 

V. 

Let the tenderness of his conscience and the Spirit of 
God call to mind his sins, that they may be confessed and 


VISITATION OF THE SICK. 


211 


repented ot: because thou hast promised, that if we con¬ 
fess our sins, we shall have mercy. Let thy mighty grace 
draw out from his soul every root of bitterness, lest the 
remains of the old man be accursed with the reserves of 
thy wrath : but in the union of the holy Jesus, and in the 
charities of God and of the world, and the communion of 
all the saints, let this soul be presented to thee blameless, 
and entirely pardoned, and thoroughly washed, through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Here also may be inserted the Prayers set down after the 
Holy Communion is administered. 

The Prayer of St. Eustatius the Martyr, to be used by the 
sick or dying man, or by the priests or assistants in his 
behalf, which he said, when he was going to martyrdom. 
I will praise thee, O Lord, that thou hast considered my 
low estate, and hast not shut me up in the hands of mine 
enemies, nor made my foes to rejoice over me: and now 
let thy right hand protect me, and let thy mercy come upon 
me; for my soul is in trouble and anguish because of its 
departure from the body. O let not the assemblies of its 
wicked and cruel enemies meet it in the passing forth, nor 
hinder me by reason of the sins of my past life. O Lord, be 
favourable unto me, that my soul may not behold the hellish 
countenance of the spirits of darkness, but let thy bright 
and joyful angels entertain it. Give glory to thy holy name 
and to thy majesty ; place me by thy merciful arm before 
thy seat of judgment, and let not the hand of the prince of 
this world snatch me from thy presence, or bear me into 
hell. Mercy, sweet Jesu. Amen. 

A prayer taken out of the Euchologion of the Greek church, 
to be said by, or in behalf of, people, in their danger, or 
near their death. 

B«/3opy3opco/usvOf rau; &.C. 

I. 

Bemired with sins and naked of good deeds, I that am the 
meat of worms, cry vehemently in spirit; cast not me a 
wretch away from thy face ; place me not on the left hand, 
who with thy hands didst fashion me; but give rest unto 
my soul, for thy great mercy’s sake, O Lord. 

II. 

Supplicate witl^ tears unto Christ, who is to judge my 
poor soul, that he will deliver me from the fire that is un- 


PRAYERS AT THE 


212 

quenchable. I pray you all, my friends and acquaintance, 
make mention of me in your prayers, that in the day of 
judgment I may find mercy at that dreadful tribunal. 

III. 

Then may the Standers-by pray. 

When in unspeakable glory, thou dost come dreadfully 
to judge the whole world, vouchsafe, O gracious Redeemer 
that this thy faithful servant may in the clouds meet thee 
cheerfully. They, who have been dead from the beginning, 
with terrible and fearful trembling stand at thy tribunal, 
waiting thy just sentence, O blessed Saviour Jesus. None 
shall there avoid thy formidable and most righteous judg¬ 
ment. All kings and princes with servants stand togethei 
and hear the dreadful voice of the judge condemning the 
people which have sinned, into hell; from which sad sen¬ 
tence, O Christ, deliver thy servant. Amen. 

Then let the sick man be called upon to rehearse the arti¬ 
cles of his faith ; or if he be so weak he cannot, let him 
(if he have not before done it) be called to say, Amen, 
when they are recited, or to give some testimony of his 
faith and confident assent to them. 

After which it is proper (if the person be in capacity) that 
the minister examine him, and invite him to confession, 
and all the parts of repentance, according to the fore¬ 
going rules: after which, he may pray this prayer of ab¬ 
solution. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath given commission to 
his church, in his name to pronounce pardon to all that 
are truly penitent, he, of his mercy, pardon and forgive thee 
all thy sins, deliver thee from all evils past, present, and 
future, preserve thee in the faith and fear of his holy name 
to thy life’s end, and bring thee to his everlasting kingdom, 
to live with him for ever and ever. Amen. 

Then let the sick man renounce all heresies, and whatso¬ 
ever is against the truth of God or the peace of the 
church, and pray for pardon for all his ignorances and 
errors, known and unknown. 

After which let him (if all other circumstances be fitted) be 
disposed to receive the blessed sacrament, in which the 
curate is to minister according to the form prescribed by 
the church. * 

When the rites are finished ?t the sick man in the days of 


* VISITATION OF THE SICK. 


his sickness be employed with the former office? 
exercises before described: and when the time d^aw« 
near of his dissolution, the minister may assist by th? 
following order of the recommendation of the soul. 

I. 

O holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus, we humbly re¬ 
commend the soul of thy servant into thy hands, thy most 
merciful hands; let thy blessed angels stand in ministry 
about thy servant, and defend him from the violence and 
malice of all his ghostly enemies, and drive far from hence all 
the spirits of darkness. Amen. 

II. 

Lord, receive the soul of this thy servant: enter not 
into judgment with thy servant: spare him whom thou hast 
redeemed with thy most precious blood: deliver him from 
all evil, for whose sake thou didst suffer all evil and mis¬ 
chief; from the crafts and assaults of the devil, from the 
fear of death, and from everlasting death, good Lord, de¬ 
liver him. Amen. 

III. 

Impute not unto him the follies of his youth, nor any of 
the errors and miscarriages of his life ; but strengthen him 
in his agony, let not his faith waver, nor his hope fail, nor 
his charity be disordered; let none of his enemies imprint 
upon him any afflictive or evil fantasm ; let him die in peace, 
and rest in hope, and rise in glory. Amen. 

IV. 

Lord, we know and believe assuredly, that whatsoever 
is under thy custody cannot be taken out of thy hands, nor 
by all the violences of hell robbed of thy protection: pre¬ 
serve the work of thy hands, rescue him from all evil; take 
into the participation of thy glories him, to whom thou hast 
given the seal of adoption, the earnest of the inheritance 
of the saints. Amen. 

V. 

Let his portion be with Abraham,Isaac, and Jacob; with 
Job and David, with the prophets and apostles, with martyrs 
and all thy holy saints, in the arms of Christ, # in the bosom 
of felicity, in the kingdom of God to eternal ages. Amen. 

These following prayers are fit also to be added to the 
foregoing offices, in case there be no communion or in¬ 
tercourse but prayer. 


214 


PRAYERS AT THE 


Let us pray. 

O almighty and eternal God, there is no number of th} 
days or of thy mercies: thou hast sent us into this world to 
serve thee, and to live according to thy laws; but we by 
our sins have provoked thee to wrath, and we have planted 
thorns and sorrows round about our dwellings: and our 
life is but a span long, and yet very tedious, because of the 
calamities that enclose us on every side; the days of our 
pilgrimage are few and evil ; we have frail and sickly 
bodies, violent and distempered passions, long designs and 
but a short stay, weak understandings and strong enemies, 
abused fancies, perverse wills. O dear God, look upon us 
in mercy and pity: let not our weaknesses make us to sin 
against thee, nor our fear cause us to betray our duty, nor 
our former follies provoke thy eternal anger, nor the 
calamities of this world vex us into tediousness of spirit and 
impatience: but let thy Holy Spirit lead us through this 
valley of misery with safety and peace, with holiness and 
religion, with spiritual comforts and joy in the Holy Ghost; 
that when we have served thee in our generations, we may 
be gathered unto our fathers, having the testimony of a 
holy conscience, in the communion of the catholic church, 
in the confidence of a certain faith, and the comforts of a 
reasonable, religious, and holy hope, and perfect charity 
with thee our God and all the world ; that neither death, 
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature, may be able to separate us from the love of 
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. 

II. 

O holy and most gracious Saviour Jesus, in whose hands 
the souls of all faithful people are laid up till the day of 
recompense, have mercy upon the body and soul of this 
thy servant, and upon all thy elect people, who love the 
Lord Jesus, and long for his coming: Lord, refresh the 
imperfection of their condition with the aids of the Spirit 
of grace and comfort, and with the visitation and guard of 
angels, and supply to them all their necessities known only 
unto thee; let them dwell in peace, and feel thy mercies 
pitying their infirmities, and the follies of their flesh, and 
speedily satisfying the desires of their spirits : and when 
thou shalt bring us all forth in the day of judgment, O 
then show thyself to be our Saviour Jesus, our advocate 


VISITATION OF THE SICK. 


215 


and our judge. Lord, then remember, that thou hast, for 
so many ages, prayed for the pardon of those sins, which 
thou art then to sentence. Let not the accusations of our 
consciences, nor the calumnies and aggravations of devils, 
nor the effects of thy wrath, press those souls, which thou 
lovest, which thou didst redeem, which thou dost pray for; 
but enable us all, by the supporting hand of thy mercy, 
to stand upright in judgment. O Lord, have mercy upon 
us, have mercy upon us: O Lord, let thy mercy lighten 
upon us, as our trust is in thee. O Lord, in thee have we 
trusted, let us never be confounded. Let us meet with 
joy, and for ever dwell with thee, feeling thy pardon, sup¬ 
ported with thy graciousness, absolved by thy sentence, saved 
by thy mercy, that we may sing to the glory of thy Name 
eternal hallelujahs. Amen. Amen. Amen. 

Then may be added, in the behalf of all that are present, 

these ejaculations. 

O spare us a little, that we may recover our strength, be¬ 
fore we go hence, and be no more seen. Amen. 

Cast us not away, in the time of age ; O forsake us not, 
when strength faileth. Amen. 

Grant, that we may never sleep in sin or death eternal, 
but that we may have our part of the first resurrection, and 
that the second death may not prevail over us. Amen. 

Grant, that our souls may be bound up in the bundle of 
life ; and in the day, when thou bindest up thy jewels, re¬ 
member thy servants for good, and not for evil, that our 
souls may be numbered amongst the righteous. Amen. 

Grant unto all sick and dying Christians mercy and aids 
from heaven ; and receive the souls returning unto thee, 
whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood. 
Amen. 

Grant unto thy servants to have faith in the Lord Jesus, 
a daily meditation of death, a contempt of the world; a 
longing desire after heaven ; patience in our sorrows ; com¬ 
fort in our sicknesses ; joy in God; a holy life and a bless¬ 
ed death; that our souls may rest in hope, and my body 
may rise in glory, and both may be beatified in the commu¬ 
nion of saints, in the kingdom of God, and the glories ot 
the Lord Jesus. Amen. 


216 


PRAYERS AT THE 


The Blessing. 

Now the God of peace,* that brought again from tliG 
dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, 
through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you 
perfect in every good word, to do his will, working in you 
that which is pleasing in his sight; to whom be glory, for 
ever and ever. Amen. 

The Doxology. 

To the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings,f 
and the Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling 
in the light, which no man can approach unto, whom no 
man hath seen or can see, be honour and power everlast¬ 
ing. Amen. 

After the sick man is departed, the minister, if he be pre¬ 
sent, or the major-domo, or any other fit person, may use 
the following prayers in behalf of themselves. 

/ 

I. 

Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of them 
that depart hence in the Lord, we adore thy majesty, and 
submit to thy providence, and revere thy justice, and mag¬ 
nify thy mercies, thy infinite mercies, that it hath pleased 
thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this 
sinful world. Thy counsels are secret, and thy wisdom is 
infinite : with the same hand thou hast crowned him, and 
smitten us ; thou hast taken him into regions of felicity, and 
placed him among saints and angels, and left us to mourn 
for our sins, and thy displeasure, which thou hast signified 
. to us by removing him from us to a better, a far better place. 

• Lord, turn thy anger into mercy, thy chastisements into 
virtues, thy rod into comforts, and do thou give to all his 
nearest relatives comforts from heaven, and a restitution 
of blessings equal to those which thou hast taken from 
them. And we humbly beseech thee, of thy gracious good¬ 
ness, shortly to satisfy the longing desires of those holy 
souls, who pray, and wait, and long for thy second com¬ 
ing. Accomplish thou the number of thine elect, and fill 
up the mansions in heaven, which are prepared for all them 
that love the coming of the Lord Jesus, that we, with this 
our brother, and all others departed this life in the obedi- 
* Heb. xiii. 20, 21. t 1 Tim. vi. 15. 16 


VISITATION OF THE SICK. 


21 


ence and faith of the Lord Jesus, may have our perfectcon- 
summation and bliss in thy eternal glory, which never shall 
have ending. Grant this for Jesus Christ’s sake, our Lord 
and only Saviour. Amen. 

II. 

O merciful God, father of our Lord Jesus, who art the 
first-fruits of the resurrection, and by entering into glory 
hath opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, we 
humbly beseech thee to raise us up from the death of sin 
to the life of righteousness, that being partakers of the 
death of Christ, and followers of his holy life, we may be 
partakers of his Spirit and of his promises ; that when we 
shall depart this life, we may rest in his arms, and lie in his 
bosom, as our hope is, this our brother doth. O suffer us 
not for any temptations of the world, or any snares of the 
devil, or any pains of death, to fall from thee. Lord, let 
thy Holy Spirit enable us with his grace to fight a good 
fight with perseverance, to finish our course with holiness, 
and to keep the faith with constancy unto the end, that, at 
the day of judgment we may stand at the right hand of 
the throne of God, and hear the blessed sentence of, 
“ Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the 
kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the 
world.” O blessed Jesus, thou art our judge, and thou 
art our advocate ; even because thou art good and gra¬ 
cious, never suffer us to fall into the intolerable pains of 
hell, never to lie down in sin, and never to have our por¬ 
tion in the everlasting burning. Mercy, sweet Jesu, mercy. 
Amen. 

A Prayer to be said in the case of a sudden Surprise by 
Death , as by a mortal Wound , or evil Accidents in Child- 
Birth, when the Forms and Solemnities of Preparation 
cannot be used . 

O most gracious Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
Judge of the living and the dead, behold thy servants run¬ 
ning to thee for pity and mercy, in behalf of ourselves, ana 
this thy servant, whom thou hast smitten with thy hasty 
rod, and a swift angel; if it be thy will, preserve his life, 
that there may be place for his repentance and restitution : 
O spare him a little, that he may recover his slrength, be- 
t 2 T 


218 


OF THE CONTINGENCIES 


fore he go hence and be no more seen. But if thou hast 
otherwise decreed, let the miracles of thy compassion and 
thy wonderful mercy supply to him the want of the usual 
measures of time, and the periods of repentance, and the 
trimming of his lamp: and let the greatness of the cala- 
lamity be accepted by thee as an instrument to procure par¬ 
don, for those defects and degrees of unreadiness, which 
may have caused this accident upon thy servant. Lord, 
stir up in him a great and effectual contrition: that the 
greatness of the sorrow, and hatred against sin, and the 
zeal of his love to thee, may, in a short time, do the work 
of many days. And thou, who regardest the heart and 
the measures of the mind more than the delay and the 
measures of time, let it be thy pleasure to rescue the soul 
of thy servant from all the evils he hath deserved, and all 
the evils that he fears ; that in the glorifications of eternity, 
and the songs, which to eternal ages thy saints and holy 
angels shall sing to the honour of thy mighty name and in¬ 
valuable mercies, it may be reckoned among thy glories, 
that thou hast redeemed this soul from the dangers of an 
eternal death, and make him partaker of the gift of God, 
eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

If there be time, the prayers in the foregoing offices may 
be added, according as they can be fitted to the present 
circumstances. 

SECTION VIII. 

A Peroration concerning the Contingencies and Treatings of 
our departed friends after Death , in order to their Burial , 
< fyc . 

When we have received the last breath of our friend, and 
closed his eyes, and composed his body for the grave, then 
seasonable is the counsel of the son of Sirach; “ Weep 
bitterly and make great moan, and use lamentation, as he 
is worthy ; and that a day or two; lest thou be evil spoken 
of; and then comfort thyself for thy heaviness. But take 
no grief to heart; for there is no turning again : thou shalt 
not do him good, but hurt thyself.” Solemn and ap¬ 
pointed mournings are good expressions of our dearness to 
the departed soul, and of his worth, and our value of him ; 
and it hath its praise in nature, and in manners, and in 
public customs; but the praise of it is not in the gospel; 
that is, it hath no direct and proper uses in religion. For 


AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 


219 

if the dead did die in the Lord, then there is joy to him, and 
it is an ill expression of our affection and our charity, to 
weep uncomfortably at a change, that hath carried my friend 
to the state of a huge felicity. Hut if the man did perish 
in his folly and his sins, there is indeed cause to mourn, but 
no hopes of being comforted ; for he shall never return to 
light, or to hopes of restitution ; therefore beware, lest 
thou also come into the same place of torment: and let 
thy grief sit down and rest upon thy own turf, and weep 
till a shower springs from the eyes to heal the wounds of 
thy spirit: turn thy sorrow into caution, thy grief for him 
that is dead, to thy care for thyself who art alive, lest thou 
die and fall like one of the fools, whose life is worse than 
death, and their death is the consummation of all felicities. 
The church, in her funerals of the dead, used to sing psalms, 
and to give thanks for the redemption and delivery of the 
soul from the evils and dangers of mortality. And there¬ 
fore we have no reason to be angry, when God hears our 
prayers, who call upon him to hasten his coming, and to 
fill up his numbers, and to do that, which we pretend to 
give him thanks for. And St. Chrysostom asks, “ To 
what purpose is it that thou singest, ‘Return unto thy rest, 
O my soul,’ &c. if thou dost not believe thy friend to be in 
rest? and if thou dost, why dost thou weep impertinently 
and unreasonably?” Nothing but our own loss can justly be 
deplored: and him, that is passionate for the loss of his 
money or his advantages, we esteem foolish and imperfect; 
and therefore have no reason to love the immoderate sor¬ 
rows of those, who too earnestly mourn for their dead, 
when, in the last resolution of the inquiry, it is their own 
evil and present or feared inconveniences they deplore : 
the best that can be said of such a grief, is, that those 
mourners love themselves too well. Something is to be 
given to custom, something to fame, to nature, and to civi¬ 
lities, and to the honour of the deceased friends; for that 
man is esteemed to die miserable, for whom no friend or 
relative sheds a tear, or pays a solemn sigh. I desire to 
die a dry death, but am not very desirous to have a dry fu¬ 
neral : some flowers sprinkled upon my grave would do 
well and comely ; and a soft shower to turn those flowers 
into a springing memory or a fair rehearsal, that I may not 
go forth of my doors, as my servants carry the entrails of 
beasts. 


OF THE CONTINGENCIES 


220 

* 

But that which is to be faulted in this particular is, when 
the grief is immoderate and unreasonable : and Paula Ro- 
mana deserved to have felt the weight of St. Jerome’s se¬ 
vere reproof, when at the death of every of her children 
she almost wept herself into her grave. But it is worse 
yet, when people, by an ambitious and a pompous sorrow, 
and by ceremonies invented for the ostentation of their 
grief, fill heaven and earth with exclamations, and grow 
troublesome, because their friend is happy, or themselves 
want his company. It is certainly a sad thing in nature to 
see a friend trembling with a palsy, or scorched with fevers, 
or dried up like a potsherd with immoderate heats, and 
rolling upon his uneasy bed without sleep, which cannot 
be invited with music, or pleasant murmurs, or a decent 
stillness; nothing but the servants of cold death, Poppy 
and Weariness, can tempt the eyes to let their curtains 
down; and then they sleep only to taste of death, and 
make an essay of the shades below: and yet we weep not 
here; the period and opportunity for tears, we choose, 
when our friend is fallen asleep, when he hath laid his 
neck upon the lap of his mother; and let his head down, 
to be raised up to heaven. This grief is ill placed and in¬ 
decent. But many times it is worse: and it hath been ob¬ 
served, that those greater and stormy passions do so spend 
the whole stock of grief, that they presently admit a com¬ 
fort and contrary affection, while a sorrow that is even and 
temperate, goes on to its period with expectation and the 
distances of a just time. The Ephesian woman, that the 
soldier told of in Petronius, was the talk of all the town, and 
the rarest example of a dear affection to her husband; she 
descended with the corpse into the vault, and there being 
attended with her maiden resolved to weep to death, or die 
with famine or a distempered sorrow : from which resolu¬ 
tion nor his nor her friends, nor the reverence of the prin¬ 
cipal citizens, who used the entreaties of their charity and 
their power, could persuade her. But a soldier that 
watched seven dead bodies hanging upon trees just over 
against this monument, crept in, and awhile stared upon 
the silent and comely disorders of the sorrow : and having 
let the wonder awhile breathe out at each other’s eyes, at 
last he fetched his supper and a bottle of W'ine, with pur¬ 
pose to eat and drink, and still to feed himself with that 
sad prettiness. His pity and first draught of wine made 


AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 


221 

mm bold and curious to try if the maid would drink ; who, 
having, many hours since, felt her resolution faint as her 
wearied body, took his kindness, and the light returned 
into her eyes, and danced like boys in a festival: and fear¬ 
ing lest the pertinaciousness of her mistress’s sorrows 
should cause her evil to revert, or her shame to approach, 
essayed whether she would endure to hear an argument to 
persuade her to drink and live. The violent passion had 
laid all her spirits in wildness and dissolution, and the maid 
found them willing to be gathered into order at the arrest 
of any new object, being weary of the first, of which, like 
leeches, they had sucked their fill, till they fell down and 
burst. The weeping woman took her cordial, and was not 
angry with her maid, and heard the soldier talk: and he 
was so pleased with the change, that he who first loved the 
silence of the sorrow, was more in love with the music of 
her returning voice, especially which he himself had strung 
and put into tune : and the man began to talk amorously, 
and the woman’s weak head and heart were soon possessed 
with a little wine, and grew gay, and talked, and fell in 
love; and that very night, in the morning of her passion, 
in the grave of her husband, in the pomps of mourning, and 
in her funeral garments, married her new and stranger 
guest. For so the wild foragers of Lybia being spent 
with heat, and dissolved by the too fond kisses of the sun, 
do melt with their common fires, and die with faintness, and 
descend with motion slow and unable to the little brooks, 
that descend from heaven in the wilderness ; and when 
they drink, they return into the vigour of a new life, and 
contract strange marriages ; and the lioness is courted by 
a panther, and she listens to his love, and conceives a 
monster that all men call unnatural, and the daughter of 
an equivocal passion and of a sudden refreshment. And 
so also was it in the cave of Ephesus ; for by this time the 
soldier began to think it was fit, he should return to his 
watch, and observe the dead bodies he had in charge : but 
when he ascended from his mourning bridal chamber, he 
found that one of the bodies was stolen by the friends of 
the dead, and that he was fallen into an evil condition, be¬ 
cause, by the laws of Ephesus, his body was to be fixed in 
the place of it. The poor man returns to his woman, cries 
out bitterly, and in her presence resolves to die to prevent 
his death, and in secret to prevent his shame: but now 
t 2 2 t 2 


222 


\ 


OF THE CONTINGENCIES 


the woman’s love was raging like her former sadness, and 
grew witty, and she comforted her soldier, and persuaded 
him to live, lest, by losing him, who had brought her from 
death and a more grievous sorrow, she should return to 
her old solemnities of dying, and lose her honour for a 
dream, or the reputation of her constancy without the 
change and satisfaction of an enjoyed love. The man 
would fain have lived, if it had been possible, and she found 
out this way for him; that he should take the body of her 
first husband, whose funeral she had so strangely mourned, 
and put it upon the gallows in the place of the stolen thief: 
he did so, and escaped the present danger, to possess a 
love, which might change as violently, as her grief had 
done. But so have I seen a crowd of disordered people 
rush violently and in heaps, till their utmost border was re¬ 
strained by a wall, or had spent the fury of the first fluctua¬ 
tion and watery progress, and by and by it returned to the 
contrary with the same earnestness, only because it was 
violent and ungoverned. A raging passion is this crowd, 
which when it is not under discipline and the conduct of 
reason, and the proportions of temperate humanity, runs 
passionately the way it happens, and by and by as greedily 
to another side, being swayed by its own weight, and driven 
any whither by chance, in all its pursuits having no rule, 
but to do all it can, and spend itself in haste, and expire 
with some shame and much indecency. 

When thou hast wept awhile, compose the body to bu¬ 
rial : which that it be done gravely, decently, and charitably, 
we have the example of all nations to engage us, and of 
all ages of the world to warrant: so that it is against com¬ 
mon honesty, and public fame and reputation, not to do 
this office. 

It is good that the body be kept veiled and secret, and 
not exposed to curious eyes, or the dishonours wrought by 
the changes of death, discerned and stared upon by im¬ 
pertinent persons. When Cyrus was dying, he called his 
sons and friends to take their leave, to touch his hand, to 
see him the last time, and gave in charge, that when he had 
put his veil over his face no man should uncover it; and 
Epiphanius’s body was rescued from inquisitive eyes by a 
miracle. Let it be interred after the manner of the country, 
and the laws of the place, and the dignity of the person. 
For so Jacob was buried with great solemnity, and Joseph’s 


AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 


223 


bones were carried into Canaan, after they had been em¬ 
balmed and kept four hundred years; and devout men 
carried St. Stephen to his burial, making great lamentation 
over him. And Alban tells that those who were the most 
excellent persons were buried in purple; and men of an 
ordinary courage and fortune, had their graves only trim¬ 
med with branches of olive, and mourning flowers. But 
when Mark Antony gave the body of Brutus to his freed- 
man to be buried honestly, he gave also his own mantle to 
be thrown into his funeral pile : and the magnificence of the 
old funeral we may see largely described by Virgil in the 
obsequies of Misenas, and by Homer in the funeral of Pa- 
troclus. It was noted for piety in the men of Jabesii-Gi- 
lead, that they showed kindness to their lord Saul and 
buried him; and they did it honourably. And our blessed 
Saviour, who was temperate in his expense, and grave in 
all the parts of his life and death, as age and sobriety itself, 
yet was pleased to admit the cost of Mary’s ointment upon 
his head and feet, because she did it against his burial: 
and though she little thought it had been so nigh, yet 
because he accepted it for that end, he knew he had made 
her apology sufficient: by which he remarked it to be a 
great act of piety, and honourable, to inter our friends and 
relatives according to the proportions of their condition, 
and so to give a testimony of our hope of their resurrection. 
So far is pierty; beyond it may be the ostentation and 
bragging of a grief, or a design to serve worse ends. 
Such was that of Herod, when he made too studied and 
elaborate a funeral for Aristobulus, whom he had mur¬ 
dered ; and of Regulus for his boy, at whose pile he killed 
dogs, nightingales, parrots, and little horses; and such 
also was the expense of some of the Romans, who, hating 
their left wealth, gave order by their testament, to have 
huge portions of it thrown into their fires, bathing their 
locks, which were presently to pass through the fire, with 
Arabian and Egyptian liquors, and balsam of Judea. In 
this, as in every thing else, as our piety must not pass 
into superstition or vain expense, so neither must the ex¬ 
cess be turned into parsimony, and chastized by negligence 
and impiety to the memory of their dead. 

But nothing of this concerns the dead in real and ef¬ 
fective purposes; nor is it with care to be provided for by 
themselves : but it is the duty of the living. For to (hem it 


224 


OF THE CONTINGENCIES 


is all one, whether they be carried forth upon a chariot or 
a wooden bier; whether they rot in the air or in the earth ; 
whether they be devoured by fishes or by worms, by birds, 
or by sepulchral dogs, by water or by fire, or by delay. 
When Criton asked Socrates how he would be buried, he 
told him, I think I shall escape from you, and that you 
cannot catch me : but so much of me as you can apprehend, 
use it as you see cause for, and bury it; but however do it 
according to the laws. There is nothing in this but opinion 
and the decency of fame to be served. Where it is esteemed 
an honour and the manner of blessed people to descend 
into the graves of their fathers, there also it is reckoned as 
a curse to be buried in a strange land, or that the birds of 
the air devour them. Some nations used to eat the bodies 
of their friends, and esteemed that the most honoured se¬ 
pulture ; but they were barbarous. The magi never buried 
any, but such as were torn of beasts. The Persians be¬ 
smeared their dead with wax, and the Egyptians with 
gums, and with great art did condite the bodies, and laid 
them in charnel-houses. But Cyrus the elder would none 
of all this, but gave command, that his body should be 
interred, not laid in a coffin of gold or silver, but just into 
the earth, from whence all living creatures receive birth and 
nourishment, and whither they must return. Among Chris¬ 
tians the honour which is valued in behalf of the dead is 
that they be buried in holy ground, that is, in appointed 
cemetries, in places of religion, there where the field of 
Cod is sown with the seeds of the resurrection, that their 
bodies also may be among the Christians, with whom their 
hope and their portion is, and shall be for ever. “ Quicquid 
feceris, omnia ha3c eodem ventura sunt.” That we are sure 
of; our bodies shall be restored to our souls hereafter, and 
in the interval they shall all be turned into dust, by what 
way soever you or your chance shall dress them. Licinus 
the freedman slept in a marble tomb ; but Cato in a little 
one, Pompey in none : and yet they had the best fate 
among the Romans, and a memory of the biggest honour. 
And it may happen, that to want a monument may best 
preserve their memories, while the succeeding ages shall 
by their instances, remember the changes of the world, 
and the dishonours of death, and the equality of the dead : 
and James the fourth, king of the Scots, obtained an epi¬ 
taph lor wanting of a tomb ; and King Stephen is remem- 


AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 


225 

bered with a sad story, because, four hundred years after 
his death, his bones were thrown into a river, that evil men 
might sell the leaden coffin. It is all one in the final event 
of things. Ninus the Assyrian had a monument erected, 
whose height was nine furlongs, and the breadth ten, saith 
Diodorus : but John the Baptist had more honour, when 
he was humbly laid in the earth between the bodies of Ab- 
dias and Elizeus. And St. Ignatius, who was buried in the 
bodies of lions, and St. Polycarp, who was burned to ashes, 
shall have their bones and their flesh again, with greater 
comfort than those violent persons who slept among kings, 
having usurped their thrones when they were alive, and 
their sepulchres, when they were dead. 

Concerning doing honour to the dead, the consideration 
is not long. Anciently the friends of the dead used to make 
their funeral orations, and what they spake of greater com¬ 
mendation, was pardoned upon the accounts of friendship ; 
but when Christianity seized upon the possession of the 
world, thie charge was devolved upon priests and bishops, 
and they first kept the custom of the world, and adorned it 
with the piety of truth and of religion ; but they also so 
ordered it, that it should not be cheap; for they made fu¬ 
neral sermons only at the death of princes, or of such holy 
persons, “ who shall judge the angels.” The custom de 
scended, and in the channels mingled with the veins of 
earth, through which it passed ; and, now-a-days, men that 
die are commended at a price, and the measure of their 
legacy is the degree of their virtue. But these things ought 
not so to be: the reward of the greatest virtue ought not to 
be prostitute to the doles of common persons, but preserved 
like laurels and coronets, to remark and encourage the 
noblest things. Persons of an ordinary life should neither 
be praised publicly nor reproached in private: for it is an 
office and charge of humanity to speak no evil of the dead 
(which, I suppose, is meant concerning things not public 
and evident;) but then neither should our charity to them 
teach us to tell a lie, or to make a great flame from a heap 
of rushes and mushrooms, and make orations crammed 
with the narrative of little observances, and acts of civil, 
and necessary, and eternal religion. 

But that wliich is most considerable is, that we should 
do something for the dead, something that L real, and of 
proper advantange. That we perform their will, the laws 


226 


OF THE CONTINGENCIES 


oblige us, and will see to it; but that we do all those parts 
of personal duty, which our dead left unperformed, and to 
which the laws do not oblige us, is an act of great charity 
aad perfect kindness : and it may redound to the advan¬ 
tage of our friends also, that their debts be paid even be¬ 
yond the inventory of their moveables. 

Besides this, let us right their causes, and assert their 
honour. When Marcus Regulus had injured the memory of 
Herennius Senecio, Metius Carus asked him, what he had 
to do with his dead ; and became his advocate after death, 
of w.*ose cause he was patron, when he was alive. And 
David added this also, that he did kindness to Mephibo- 
sheth for Jonathan’s sake: and Solomon pleaded his fa¬ 
ther’s cause by the sword against Joab and Shimei. And 
certainly it is the noblest thing in the world to do an act of 
kindness to him, whom we shall never see, but yet hath de¬ 
served it of us, and to whom we would do it if he were pre¬ 
sent; and unless we do so, our charity is mercenary, and 
our friendships are direct merchandize, and our gifts are 
brokage : but what we do to the dead, or to the living for their 
sakes, is gratitude, and virtue for virtue’s sake, and the 
noblest portion of humanity. 

And yet I remember, that the most excellent prince 
Cyrus, in his last exhortation to his sons upon his death¬ 
bed, charms them into peace and union of hearts and de¬ 
signs, by telling them, that his soul would be still alive, 
and therefore tit to be revered and accounted as awful and 
venerable, as when he was alive : and what we do to our 
dead friends, is not done to persons undiscerning as a 
fallen tree, but to such, who better attend to their relatives, 
and to greater purposes, though in other manner, than 
they did here below. And therefore those wise persons, 
who in their funeral orations made their doubt, with an 

H T15 uKrSqtris roig Trcpt ttstv it'S’etS's yiyvapuvisv^ “ If the 

dead have any perception of what is done below,” which 
are the words of Isocrates, in the funeral encomium 
of Evagoras, did it upon the uncertain opinion of the 
soul’s immortality; but made no question, if they were 
living, they did also understand what could concern them. 
The same words Nazienzen uses at the exequies of 
his sister Gorgonia, and in the former invective against 
Julian: but this was upon another reason, even because it 
was uncertain, what the state of separation was, and whe- 


AND TREATING OUR DEAD. 


‘227 

ther our dead perceive any thing of us, till we shall meet in 
the day of judgment. If it was uncertain then, it is certain, 
since that time we have had no new revelation concerning 
it; but it is ten to one but, when we die, we shall find 
the state of affairs wholly differing from all our opinions 
here, and that no man or sect hath guessed any thing at 
all ol it, as it is. Here I intend not to dispute, but to per¬ 
suade ; and therefore in the general, if it be probable, that 
they know or feel the benefits done to them, though but by 
a reflex revelation from God, or some under-communica¬ 
tion from an agel, or the stock of acquired notices here 
below 7 , it may the rather endear us to our charities or duties 
to them respectively ; since our virtues use not to live upon 
abstractions, and metaphysical perfections, or inducements, 
but then thrive, when they have material arguments, such 
which are not too far from sense. However it be, it is cer¬ 
tain they are not dead ; and though we no more see the 
souls of our dear friends, than we did when they were 
alive, yet we have reason to believe them to know more 
things and better : and if our sleep be an image of death, 
we may also observe concerning it, that it is a state of life 
so separate from communications with the body, that it is 
one of the ways of oracle and prophecy by which the soul 
best declares her immortality, and the nobleness of her 
actions, and powers, if she could get free from the body 
(as in the state of separation, or a clear dominion over it,) 
as in the resurrection. To which also this consideration 
may be added, that men a long time live the life of sense, 
before they use their reason ; and till they have furnished 
their head with experiments and notices of many things, 
they cannot at all discourse of any thing: but when they 
come to use their reason, all their knowledge is nothing 
but remembrance; and we know by proportions, by simili¬ 
tudes and dissimilitudes, by relations and oppositions, by 
causes and effects, by comparing things with things ; all 
which are nothing but operations of understanding upon 
the stock of former notices, of something we knew before, 
nothing but remembrances: all the heads of topics, which 
are the stock of all arguments and sciences in the world, 
are a certain demonstration of this ; and he is the wisest 
man, that remembers most, and joins those remembrances 
together, to the best purposes of discourse. From whence 
it may not be improbably gathered, that in the state of se- 


228 


or treating our dead. 


parution, if there be any act of understanding, that is, if 
*he understanding be alive, it must be relative to the no¬ 
nces it had in this world ; and therefore the acts ot it must 
be discourses upon all the parts and persons of their con¬ 
versation and relation, excepting only such new revelations 
which may be communicated to it: concerning which we 
know nothing. But if by seeing Socrates I think upon 
Plato, and by seeing a picture I remember a man, and by 
beholding two friends, I remember my own and my friend’s 
need (and he is the wisest that draws most lines from the 
same centre, and most discourses from the same notices;) 
it cannot but be very probable to believe, since the sepa¬ 
rate souls understand better, if they understand at all, that 
from the notices they carried from hence, and what they 
find there equal or unequal to those notices, they can better 
discover the things of their friends, than we can here by 
our conjectures and craftiest imaginations : and yet many 
men here can guess shrewdly at the thoughts and designs 
of such men with whom they discourse, or of whom they 
have heard, or whose characters they prudently have per¬ 
ceived. I have no other end in this discourse, but that 
we may be engaged to do our duty to our dead ; lest per- 
adventure they should perceive our neglect, and be wit¬ 
nesses of our transient affections and forgetfulness. Dead 
persons have religion passed upon them, and a solemn re¬ 
verence : and if we think a ghost beholds us, it may be, 
we may have upon us the impressions likely to be made by 
love, and fear, and religion. However, we are sure, that 
God sees us, and the world sees us: and if it be matter of 
duty towards our dead, God will exact it: if it be matter 
of kindness, the world will: and as religion is the band of 
that, so fame and reputation are the endearment of this. 

It remains, that we who are alive, should so live, and by 
the actions of religion attend the coming of the day of the 
Lord, that we neither be surprised, nor leave our duties 
imperfect, nor our sins uncancelled, nor our persons unre¬ 
conciled, nor God unappeased; but that, when we descend 
to our graves, we may rest in the bosom of the Lord, till 
the mansions be prepared, where we shall sing and feast 
eternally. Amen. 

7V Deum Laudamus. 


THE END 


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